• Samsung is Working on Flexible Screens for Smartphones and Tablets

    // Gradly // blog, News, Samsung, Tech. 2 Responses

    Galaxy Skin

    During a call to discuss Samsung’s most recent financial results, the company’s spokesman, Robert Yi, said that Samsung was working on a flexible display for its upcoming smartphones and tablets. Samsung hopes to introduce flexible displays to its smartphone lineup in as early as 2012

    “The flexible display, we are looking to introduce sometime in 2012, hopefully the earlier part,” said spokesman Robert Yi during an earnings call. “The application probably will start from the handset side.”

    Yi said tablets and other mobile devices with flexible displays would follow.”

    Samsung has already shown flexible screen technology in the past, with the OLED display held inside rigid cases that kept them curved.

    The new Samsung Galaxy Skin will feature an AMOLED display that will allow the phone to bend around a cylinder with a 1-inch diameter. Brighter than the normal screen, the AMOLED display is also low-energy and almost unbreakable, according to the reports.

    Using a plastic polyimide substrate instead of glass, Samsung has produced displays that are “rollable and bendable” and which can even “survive blows from a hammer”. The phone was developed by Prof Haeseong Jee and Jye Yeon You.

    The key material of this new technology is ‘graphene’, touted as “the miracle material”. Research by scientists from Columbia University has established that ‘graphene’ is the strongest material in the world, “some 200 times stronger than structural steel”.

    The Galaxy Skin will offer a high-resolution 800×480 flexible AMOLED screen, eight megapixel camera and 1Gb of RAM as well as a 1.2GHz processor. Samsung has not yet disclosed the device’s operating system, but there have been rumors about Jelly Bean – Google’s next Android release after Ice Cream Sandwich – or a new release called Android Flexy.

    The new core technology also allows the phone to be used as a mouse, a clock or a wrist-watch. Samsung has not confirmed the exact date of release.

  • Siri Successfully Ported to Run on iPhone 4 and iPod Touch

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Featured, iPhone, Jailbreak, News, Rants & Raves, Tech. 1 Response

    Siri has finally made its way to the iPhone 4

    Developer Steven Troughton-Smith had successfully ported the Siri onto the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch. The video provided below not only shows the Siri functionality on an iPhone 4, but is in depth and shows a side-to-side comparison against the iPhone 4S. In addition, the video shows the Siri Dictation in action.

    iPhone 4S jailbreak was the key to make the port working successfully on iPhone 4. 9to5mac’s Mark Gurman has brought this story and an got exclusive interview about the port with the developer:

    Mark: Where do you go from here with the port?

    Steven: At this point it’s all about confirming this works across devices, making it reproducible (we got it working on two devices today), and documenting everything. It does require files from an iPhone 4S which aren’t ours to distribute, and it also requires a validation token from the iPhone 4S that has to be pulled live from a jailbroken iPhone 4S, and it’s about a 20-step process right now.

    Mark: In its current state, is the port 100% functional, is there anything you would like to see work better?

    Steven: Yes, it seems to be 100% functional. I’m working on the rough edges, but everything that works on the iPhone 4S seems to work here.

    Mark: Do you ever see Siri showing up in Cydia (or another jailbreak store) for non natively supported devices?

    Steven: No, I could not be a part of that. I have no doubts that others will package this up and distribute it quasi-illegally, or try and sell it to people. I am only interested in the technology and making it work; proving that it works and works well on the iPhone 4 and other devices.

    Mark: So, you also got Siri working on the fourth-generation iPod touch, how is that working out?

    Steven: We got chpwn’s iPod touch up and running with Siri after proving it works on my iPhone 4. Unfortunately the microphone on the iPod is nowhere near as good as the iPhone – you will notice that the Siri level meter hardly moves when you talk to it. While it does work, you have to speak loudly and clearly to the iPod.

    Mark: How long did porting take you, what was the “I got it” moment?

    Steven: Basically, I already had everything I needed to make it work. I had spent a lot of time mapping out in my head exactly how Siri works on the iPhone. All I needed was access to a jailbroken iPhone 4S to put my hunch to the test. It literally took no longer than 10 minutes to put all the pieces in place and perform our first test on my iPhone 4, and it was an instant success.

  • Watch Microsoft’s Vision of the Post PC Era

    // Gradly // blog, Microsoft, Rants & Raves, Tech. No Responses

    Watch Microsoft’s Vision of the Post PC Era

    Watch how future technology will help people make better use of their time, focus their attention, and strengthen relationships while getting things done at work, home, and on the go.

    The future is amazing, and Microsoft has video to prove it. Watch the clip below:

  • Samsung Galaxy Nexus Screen Held Back by Cheaper PenTile OLED

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, iPhone, Samsung, Tech. No Responses

    Samsung Galaxy Nexus

    The new Samsung Galaxy Nexus sports a 720p HD display, its 4.65-inch screen is said to be held back by cheaper technology that gives it a lower pixel density and poorer color accuracy than Apple’s Retina Display found on the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4.

    According to FlatPanelsHD, the Galaxy Nexus features a display branded “Super AMOLED” by Samsung, which is less than the “Super AMOLED Plus” screen featured on the already-available Galaxy S II smartphone. The removal of “Plus” from the name references that the screen uses a cheaper PenTile OLED, despite the fact that it has more pixels per inch, .

    The less expensive panel on the Galaxy Nexus means that individual pixels must share subpixels on the screen, which undercuts the 315 pixel-per-inch density of the Galaxy Nexus display.

    “A PenTile OLED panel was recently introduced with the Samsung Galaxy Note, and we were not impressed. In real world PenTile means loss of details and sharpness, as well as a bluish/greenish tint around letters (depending on the background color)”

    By calculating the “real” pixel density of the display with the PenTile subpixel sharing, the Galaxy Nexus is said to have a pixel-per-inch number of about 200, which is just slightly higher than the Super AMOLED Plus screen on the Galaxy S II.

    “So, the HD Super AMOLED display in the new Galaxy Nexus is not as awesome as it sounds — unfortunately,” author Rasmus Larsen wrote. “And the reason that people do not call it a Retina display should seem much more obvious to you now that you know the underlying technical architecture.”

    The pixel density numbers of the Galaxy Nexus are also affected by the fact that the new flagship Android device has a large 4.65-inch screen to fill. For comparison, the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 feature a display more than an inch smaller diagonally, at 3.5 inches.

    Samsung/Google states that Galaxy Nexus has a slightly curved screen but the same was said for the Nexus S where it was later revealed that only the front glass was curved

    Apple made the term “Retina Display” part of its marketing with the launch of the iPhone 4 in 2010. The name was chosen because Apple says the individual pixels are so small and densely packed that they cannot be seen by the human eye. The iPhone 4 and its follow-up, the newly released iPhone 4S, feature a pixel-per-inch density of 326.