LUSARAP

Motorola has revealed that it plans to launch a £30 ($50) smartphone is a bid to offer better value devices to a wider audience.

A China Mobile version of the upcoming ZTE Geek has been pictured, by none other than ZTE itself. The picture comes in conjunction with images outed by Chinas TENAA certification database, which is notorious for leaking devices coming out of Asia. ZTE has released some shots of the device from a more flattering (albeit somewhat gushy) perspective.


Sporting a 5-inch fullHD LCD and an upgraded front-facing camera, the real star of the show is the expected NVIDIA Tegra 4 chipset inside, featuring four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. This is bound to be the official debut of the chipset in a smartphone.

For now, the ZTE Geek U988S is set to work only on China Mobiles TD-SCDMA network, so well have to wait and see if a global version of the Tegra 4-powered Geek is also in the works.

Budget smartphone manufacturer ZTE has spilled the beans on its future phone plans, confirming that it is looking at launching a bendable handset.

Samsung has announced a new selection of smartphone and tablet bound LEDs, with one of the new integrated flash units expected to feature on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5.


With the Samsung Galaxy S5 camera expected to be one of the phone’s main talking points, jumping to a 16-megapixel snapper from a 13-megapixel offering, the new announcements have hinted the handset will also benefit from an improved flash.

In making the announcement, Samsung’s Senior Vice President of LED Strategic Marketing, Bangwon Oh stated: “Samsung is becoming an integrated LED component solutions provider that offers highly differentiated value to customers by producing outstanding LED component solutions which are shaping new directions in mobile devices.”

Detailing the new components a Samsung spokesperson added: “Samsung Electronics today introduced a range of LED component solutions for use in advanced mobile devices such, as smartphones and tablets.

“The new LEDs for mobile devices include two reflector-integrated flash LED packages ─ the 3432 1.8t (FH341A) and 3432 1.4t (FH341B), plus a flip-chip flash LED 2016 (FH201A), as well as two side-view LEDs ─ the 3810 0.6t (MS062F) and 3810 0.8t (MS082F).

Highlighted as the star of the lineup, Samsung’s 3432 1.8t (FH341A) looks set to feature in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5.

According to the Korean manufacturer, the new flash module will deliver over 165 lux at 1A and a minimum colour rendering index of 80. What this all means in short, is that shots in low lighting and indoor environments are set to improve dramatically, with more natural lighting being provided.

Speaking on this LED flash system, the manufacturer has teased: “The 3421 1.8t is expected to be used in smartphones this year.”

As well as benefitting from an improved camera set up, recent Samsung Galaxy S5 rumours have claimed the phone will be powered by a 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 3GB of RAM and Google’s latest Android 4.4 KitKat OS.

If 2013s going to be remembered for one thing in the smartphone world, its as the year where cameras got good. Almost any device youd care to name now has a shooter that takes more-than-decent photos in daylight.


That leaves only one battleground where smartphone cameras dont fare so well – in the dark. On some of the biggest phones of the year, the main boasts havent been about processing power or even the number of megapixels in the camera; but rather how good they are at taking photos once the sun goes down.

The HTC One, for example, was launched in March with only a 4MP camera, but one with much larger pixels (what HTC calls Ultrapixels). The reasoning behind that was clear: larger pixels means less noise, better light-gathering and all-round superior low-light performance.

Nokia, as well, has been focused on low-light performance, with both the Lumia 925 and Lumia 1020 featuring innovations like optical image stabilisation and oversampling to improve the phones low-light performance.

Even Apple put a wider lens and better flash into its iPhone 5S, innovations that are almost exclusively geared towards taking better photos in the dark.

These approaches are a little different from those taken by other manufacturers: Sony is a prime example, with both of its 2013 flagships, the Xperia Z and Xperia Z1, sporting cameras that were big on the megapixel count, but suffered badly compared to the competition once things got dark.

The number one reason why proper cameras – DSLRs – are so much better at taking photos in the dark is that theyre a lot bigger. The cameras sensor, the little rectangle that sees the outside world and turns light into electrons, is orders of magnitude larger in a professional full-frame camera like the Nikon D3S, or even a more enthusiast-level mirrorless camera like the Sony NEX C-3.

That matters because the bigger the sensor, the more light that hits it, and the brighter the picture is. Its like leaving a Post-It and an A3 sheet of paper out in the rain – far more waters going to hit your giant sheet of paper.

The end result is that low-light photos, like the one taken above, look great with a large-sensored DSLR, but are a poor-detailed mess on smartphones. In addition to just not being bright enough, theres another problem that plagues smartphone photos taken in the dark: noise.

To compensate for the small sensor size, smartphones often increase the sensitivity of their sensors, a value often referred to as ISO – the higher the ISO setting, the more sensitive the sensor is to light.

However, higher ISOs also generate noise, random pixels that light up or change colour, making the photo look grainy and downright horrible. Its not unlike turning your speakers up past where they were meant to – everything turns into a muddy mush.

Bigger (and more expensive) sensors can generally go up to much higher ISO settings without noise, which is one of the reasons DSLRs can shoot much better in low light. Whereas an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy can dial up to around ISO 3200, the very best DSLRs go all the way to 204,800, and even more pedestrian mirrorless cameras hit an ISO around 25,600 with ease.

To get around the problems of noise at higher ISO levels, manufacturers – in particular Nokia – have been turning to clever software tricks. Thanks to the 41MP sensor in the Lumia 1020, Nokia are able to employ oversampling, a trick that essentially combines pixels, reducing the overall megapixel count of the camera, but in turn cutting out those rogue pixels that cause noise.

According to Juha Alakarhu, Head of Imaging Technologies at Nokia: "With oversampling, we can avoid many of the problems that traditional cameras have, and we not only overcome the problems but make things much better".

Another factor in capturing good low-light images is the quality and size of the lens. For light to actually get to the sensor in the first place, it has to go through the optics, and for low-light photography, one number is important above all others: the aperture size. This number, measured as an f-stop (where, bizarrely, smaller is bigger), determines how wide the aperture on the lens goes at maximum, and therefore how much light goes through to hit the sensor.

Again, aperture size is something phone manufacturers are pushing hard. Whereas the iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy S2 both featured aperture sizes of around f2.7, the iPhone 5S goes all the way down to f2.2 – and Nokia goes even bigger, with even its midrange phones like the Lumia 720 sporting a f1.9 lens. Thats close to the performance of full-sized cameras, where even the best lenses, costing thousands of pounds, rarely get beyond f1.4.

In addition to the aperture size, theres something else manufacturers can play with: optical image stabilization. The reason many hardcore photographers use tripods to capture images in the dark is that by increasing the exposure time (how long the shutters open for), you increase how much light hits the sensor.

Sadly, long exposures also mean one other thing: blur, from our ever-fallible shaky human hands.

Optical image stabilization is a means of staving off blur: by essentially giving the lens a bit of suspension, minor shaking can be eliminated, and slightly longer – and brighter – exposures can be taken. Although optical image stabilisation has been a staple in high-end camera lenses for around a decade, its a relatively new (and welcome) addition to the smartphone world, with Nokia adding it since the Lumia 920, and the HTC One following close behind.

However, optical image stabilisation, being a physical process, adds bulk to phones – one of the reasons the camera is so prominent on phones like the HTC One and Lumia 925. Thats the reason why many manufacturers are now looking to a software solution to low-light photography – post-processing.

Just as Photoshop can fix red-eye and a wonky horizon, software can also fix the noise: its just a matter of processing power. With phone processors now routinely quad-core monsters like those packed into the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Lumia 1520, processing power is abundant – and image processing, historically a task out of reach of mobile devices, is now pretty simple.

Nokia has been "building its own propriety imaging algorithms", and its now even added support for the lossless RAW image format, which is far more friendly to post-processing on computers. Hopefully, that means upcoming smartphones will hit higher ISO levels with less noise, all meaning theres a better chance of you getting a half-decent selfie in the next bar you choose to frequent.

Across the board, then, theres no indication of the low-light improvements slowing down. Although some things – like the size of the aperture – are almost as good as they can physically get, theres constant improvement across the board, all minor changes that promise major rewards in the near future.

According to Nokia, "The overall image quality is the combination of all these things coming together, and we continue to work hard and push the boundaries in all of these areas".

But with the best cameras still costing thousands of pounds, not to mention being larger than a whole flock of iPhones, the challenge is reducing these breakthroughs down to a size – and more importantly, price – where they can be crammed into our pockets.

The news that HP may make a return to the smartphone business is refusing to die down and we now have a render to cast our eyes over, although its origins are unclear.


HP hasnt exactly shied away from a potential return to the phone sphere, with the firms CEO revealing it was working on a smartphone last year. That was followed by similar comments from another exec in February and a senior director earlier this month.

PhoneArena has now got hold of a render which claims to show HPs Android smartphone, but the tipster who passed it over didnt present any information on the device.

In terms of design the handset in the picture appears to borrow its shape from the iPhone 5, while the centralised notification light below the screen is reminiscent of the Nexus 4.

Dock me

No clues were given as to how the tipster came about the render, or how well connected they are so were taking this leak with a sizable pinch of salt for now.

Another hint that HP is working on mobile solutions has come via a patent application picked up by Patently Apple, which documents an ultrabook with a dock for a mobile phone built into it.


This phone, however, is said to be powered by Windows and not Android allowing it to seamlessly integrate with the computer, suggesting HP may develop handsets to run on Windows Phone as well as Googles offering.

Well have to wait and see if these ideas really do come to fruition, but were intrigued as to what HP may be able to offer the already crowed mobile market.

Sony has announced the launch of the Sony Xperia T2 Ultra, a new large-screen Android smartphone aimed at emerging markets.

With many flagship phones currently running near identical specs sheets, Samsung has suggested that smartphone hardware progressed too quickly.

There is someone in every household who always forgets to turn off the lights or television before bed.

Android accounted for 81% of worldwide smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2013 and iOS mopped up most of the rest according to a study by IDC.


With that in mind it could be easy to think that Mozillas new Firefox OS is doomed to fail; after all, how can it hope to compete with the sales figures of Apple and Google, especially when veterans like BlackBerry and big names like Microsofts Windows Phone are struggling to make much of a dent in global sales?

But Firefox OS isnt just another smartphone operating system. Its fundamentally different in creation to any of the major players and Mozillas tactics and aims are somewhat different too.

Firefox OS - App freedom

The goal of Firefox OS is primarily to create a truly open ecosystem, one where all apps can run on other operating systems and on almost any hardware. In other words: do away with the walled gardens that weve all become so accustomed to on phones.

Other smartphone platforms require apps to be developed specifically for them, so if a developer wants to put an app on multiple device types then it has to be manually ported each time.

It also means that if a user ever abandons one operating system for another they wont be able to access their apps anymore. Theyll have to find and buy them all again and thats if theyre even available.

Firefox OS handles apps more like the internet handles web pages. Rather than proprietary tools theyre built using open web standards like HTML5 and JavaScript, so they can run on just about any computing device that has access to Firefox, meaning Android phones and PCs alike can make use.

In other words theyre platform agnostic and as both Firefox OS and its apps have low hardware requirements you can access them on very affordable devices, designed to make the mobile web more open with minimal barriers to entry so the maximum amount of users can get involved.

Its a lofty goal, but if Firefox OS wasnt so ambitious and so different it would have little hope of attracting any attention at all in the congested smartphone market - although its worth noting that this project is as much about offering something new to the developing markets as it is trying to break the smartphone stranglehold in the more mature areas.

Firefox OS is also about trust and community development. As a truly open source OS its very transparent, allowing tech-savvy users to see how their personal data is handled, while both individuals and organisations are free to build on and modify Firefox OS to improve it and make it available for other platforms.

Firefox OS - Adaptation

Firefox OS has another trick up its sleeve too and its called adaptive app search. Its a search screen which is used both to find apps and documents that are already installed on your phone and web apps that you might be interested in, essentially combining a web search with a search of your phone storage.

Simply type a word out and it will bring back all the relevant results from both local and online content. Web apps can then be used immediately or downloaded to your phone and the results will even adapt to your location when relevant, ensuring you always get the best results possible.

This web-facing approach doesnt mean any phone running Firefox OS has no similarities to your Android or iPhone.

It still uses a lock screen, home screen and notifications bar and handsets which run Firefox OS come with a camera complete with style filters, a music player and FM radio.

On top of that theres the obvious suite of software: maps, the Firefox web browser, Firefox Marketplace for apps, an email app and built in integration with Facebook and Twitter to make users coming from other smartphones should feel right at home.

Firefox OS - Starting small

But even with all the positive aspects of Firefox OS its not really ready to take on Android and iOS. Both of those operating systems have been around for years and gone through numerous changes, while Firefox OS is only on version 1.2.

It also has far fewer apps than either of the big two and so far its only available for a handful of phones, most of which are pretty low end.

So its not likely to tempt too many consumers on these shores in its current state, but then its also not easily available in many of the more developed smartphone nations yet and thats a very conscious decision from Mozilla.

Smartphones are enormously popular in the UK, for instance, where 62.2% of the population has one according to a study by Statista. Disposable incomes are higher too, so expensive flagship phones are in great demand and the super-cheap aspirations of Firefox arent being touted beyond finding some hardware available on eBay.

As such its incredibly unlikely that Firefox OS could make much headway in this area, with users entrenched in iOS and Android and looking for high end handsets.

Its a similar story in the US and other wealthy nations, which is why Firefox OS is not available in them for the most part either. But there are some parts of the world where its a very different story.

In Peru, for example, smartphone penetration stands at just 17%, according to a study by Ipsos Peru, leaving the vast majority of its 30,475,144 strong population without a handset and likely to be more open to an iOS and Android alternative.

This is true when you consider the availability of very affordable phones such as the ZTE Open and could soon be available for phones which cost as little as $25, which puts it in direct competition with the feature phone price range.

In case you havent guessed, Peru is one of the places where you can currently buy Firefox OS phones, showing Mozilla is instead trying to capture new and developing markets where the fact that its so new wont be such a problem and the fact that its affordable will be a huge advantage.

With Firefox OS running on just 128MB of RAM its going to be an appealing option for both customers and manufacturers, who can squeeze the OS into increasingly cheap handsets.

In an interview Mozillas Head of Engineering, Jonathan Nightingale, told us that "our CEO talks about how were going to have 2 billion people joining the web for the first time and weve got about two billion on the web now, so the two billion coming in is going to look really different.

"A lot of people are asking whether Firefox OS is designed for the emerging market and whether thats our segment. Certainly, thats an important place for us to be. Were non-profit, were mission driven so we look at it and think, if those people are coming online, theyre not going to be doing it on a $700 smartphone. We have a real opportunity to introduce something there."

By focusing on developing markets Mozilla is also working towards its goal of bringing the web to more people, as it will get internet enabled phones into the hands of those who may never have owned a smartphone or computer before.

Its a strategy mirrored by the likes of Nokia, which has had plans to build phones that connect the next billion users to the internet and explains why its adding a version of Android (with the Nokia X) to its range to service this market segment which has access to 3G but no fixed landlines.

Other brands, such as Sony, Huawei, LG and Alcatel are all getting behind the open OS, committing to launching hardware with a smattering of devices in the market, with more to come. Its not a huge, sweeping effort to enter the market, but shows that there is at least some intrigue there.

So far things seem to be going according to plan for Mozillas new OS, as back in October it was reported by Telefonica that Firefox OS accounted for more than 12% of smartphone sales in Venezuela and almost 9% in Colombia.

Firefox OS - Onwards and upwards

Ultimately, once the OS matures (assuming it survives that long), theres every chance that it will spread to the UK and beyond and until it has matured you probably wont want it anyway.

Even if or when it does go global Mozilla doesnt necessarily need it to compete with Android and iOS.

As a non-profit organisation it doesnt need to be number one, all it needs is for enough people to be using Firefox OS that its a known entity and that developers are making a large number of applications for it, applications which can then be run on other devices, keeping the mobile web open and accessible, which are two of the key stated goals in Mozillas Manifesto.

Firefox OSs use of HTML5 should make it easier for developers to get on board too as many will already know HTML5 and wont have to learn a new programming language. In the words of Nightingale: "Theres 200,000 iOS developers, 600,000 Android developers and theres 8 million web developers out there. If youre not betting on HTML5, youre making a mistake."

But Firefox OS isnt even just about phones. Panasonic for example plans to use Firefox OS in some of its smart TVs, while in the future Mozilla wants to see Firefox OS and the principles of openness that come with it make their way to smartwatches, cars and anything else with an internet connection.

As Firefox OS is an open source system that other companies and individuals are allowed to adapt and use for their own purposes theres no reason it couldnt power stereos, fridges, vacuum cleaners and just about anything else in the future. In fact its ideally positioned to capitalise on the ever growing number of smart devices.

Theres no doubt that it has an uphill struggle, but by taking a different, altogether more altruistic approach to things Mozilla and its Firefox OS might just stand a chance, particularly in developing nations.

But with its focus firmly on the low-end of the market for now its unlikely to be making waves in the more developed nations for the next few years - then again, at such a low cost, its not unfeasible even now that you could pop online and buy an unlocked handset running the platform instead of upgrading to that hyper-expensive flagship model.

Samsung will launch Tizen smartphones in March, released just after MWC 2014.