Is Samsung ChatON wants to kill SMS?

Is Korea-based smartphone maker Samsung quietly trying to kill SMS (text) messaging?

Samsung has started porting to its smartphones its cross-platform Web-based "ChatON" messaging client app, tech site TechCrunch reported.

The web version of the messaging client is likely to work on most feature phones and computers as well, it added.

"ChatON" had been in the works, with Samsung indicating ChatON will be a cross-platform service.

"Now, with the web app, the crusade is seemingly complete. ChatON users can easily communicate using either their platform’s app or just a web browser. Accounts are linked, so no matter what device you’re rocking, you’ll be available. See ya later, text messages!" TechCrunch said.

Another article on TechCrunch said ChatON is to go live next month in over 120 countries and 62 languages.

On feature phones, the ChatON ervice allows for text, images, calendar appointment and contact sharing.

But on smartphones, it offers extra options, such as the ability to comment on each other’s profiles, send multimedia messages that combine text and audio, and view their own “Interaction Rank,” which displays how active they are on the ChatOn network.

The new web-based app also allows users to group chat, have 1:1 conversations, and supports attachments, emoticons and more.

Yet, TechCrunch noted carriers are reportedly losing major revenue from services like ChatON that use a data connection rather than traditional messaging rates.

"While text messages are essentially locked into a 2003-ish feature set, apps like Samsung’s ChatOn and Apple’s Messages are free to roll out innovative features to users anytime. I say good riddance. Death to SMS and it’s crazy cost," it said.

ChatON goes cross-platform

ChatON is a cross-platform mobile chat service similar to RIM’s BlackBerry Messaging (BBM) and is slated to support a variety of mobile operating systems.

Such OSes include Samsung’s own mobile operating system, Android, feature phones and even competitors’ platforms, including iOS and BlackBerry.

Social media eating into carrier revenues?

A third TechCrunch story said Twitter, Facebook and other social networks may be eating up revenues.

It cited the analyst firm of Ovum, part of the Informa Group, has estimated that operators lost $13.9 billion in SMS revenue in 2011, as customers used services like Twitter and Facebook to message each other instead of the carriers’ own text messaging services.

TechCrunch also cited a separate report from mobile analytics firm Bytemobile showing huge growth in the use of social media on mobile — with operators getting virtually no benefit as a result.

Bytemobile, using data it gathers from its tier-one carrier customers, found that the average mobile user spends around nine minutes per day each on Facebook and YouTube on mobile.

"There is a caveat, of course: carriers are still making money from people using their phones to use social networks: users are, after all, still buying 3G and 4G data plans; and many (but not all) carriers also roll public Wi-Fi connectivity into those plans," TechCrunch said.

But it said it is questionable whether in the short term that incremental data revenues for tweets, status updates and check-ins, and the more substantial data usage from services like YouTube, can offset the loss from the more lucrative messaging services that operators built up and still count on for revenues.

"Longer term, Ovum predicts that by 2016 mobile data will bring in $419 billion in revenues for operators, out of a total service revenues of $1,047 billion," it said.


[source GMA]
[via GMA]

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Motorola estimates 10.5 million devices shipped in Q4 2011, over half smartphones

We'll need to wait for the company's earnings later this month for the final numbers, but Motorola has now provided some preliminary results for the fourth quarter of 2011 that indicate smartphones accounted for more than fifty percent of all the mobiles devices it shipped. Specifically, Motorola estimates that it shipped a total of 10.5 million devices in the quarter, 5.3 million of which are smartphones (there's no further breakdown beyond that). That's up from 4.8 million smartphones in the previous quarter, although the number of total mobile devices slipped from 11.6 million.

The company also says it expects "modest profitability" with estimated sales of $3.4 billion for the quarter, and it reaffirmed that it expects Google's $12.5 billion acquisition to close in "early 2012" if all goes as planned. Head on past the break for the press release.

[Source Engadget]

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Samsung Galaxy Note for AT&T: press shots confirm what you already knew

As if you weren’t convinced that Samsung’s almost-certainly-gigantic Galaxy Note was coming to AT&T, well… good luck refuting this. 

Just a day after an accessory vendor seemingly outed the truth, PocketNow has stumbled upon what appears to be the first legitimate press images for the Gingerbread-based handset. It’s going by SGH-I717 internally, and it’ll purportedly boast a 5.3-inch display (1,280 x 800), a 1.4GHz Exynos processor and a promise to get its user all kinds of stares.

As for a release date? Betters might place a few bills on Valentine’s Day — we’ll let you peer some more and ponder why.

[Via Engadget]

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Turn your phone into a games console with the Gametel

Turn your Android smartphone or tablet into a portable games console with the Gametel.The Gametel, produced by Swedish gaming peripheral company Fructel, is a wireless controller that helps you play games on your mobile device.

The Gametel looks familiar to gamers – with its D-pad, four buttons and two shoulder triggers. It is compatible with phones and tablets running Android 2.1.1 Éclair or later and connects to your device using Bluetooth. The device connects to a phone or tablet with the built-in adjustable spring-loaded clamp. Once paired, the Gametel will connect automatically, every time it is turned on,
There are more than 50 compatible games available for download from Android Market – Happy Vikings, Cordy, Reckless Getaway and MotoX Mayhem to name a few.

Bo Nyman, CEO of Fructel says: “Playing casual games on a touchscreen phone is fine but when it comes to playing the more addictive and immersive titles, seamless gameplay is impossible. The Gametel controller overcomes this problem by delivering a console experience on your Android device, freeing the screen from fingers, opening up a bigger viewing area and delivering more responsive physical controls.”
And if your Android device has HDMI, mobile gaming can also be brought to the big screen. Hook up an Android device to an HDTV, wirelessly connect up to four Gametel controllers and you can bring your favourite mobile games into the living room with a console-like multi-player set-up.
The Gametel offers around nine hours of battery life and switches off automatically after six minutes if it is not in use.
The Gametel costs £49.99 from Amazon.

[via LatestGadgets]

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Three: Hands-on review

Three were so excited about the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the flagship Android phone, that they sent me one to cast my weary eye over for a week or so. So how is the new hotness? 

Samsung and Google left little out of the guts of the Galaxy Nexus. Inside the device you’ll find a dual-core TI OMAP 4460 CPU clocked to 1.2GHz, 1GB of RAM, 32GB or 16GB of storage (I tested a phone with 16GB), and the usual assortment of radios (Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, GPS). The device is also equipped with an NFC chip, as well as a compass, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, and barometer.

 

Smartphone cameras are rapidly getting better and better and are being called upon to do more heavy lifting. The camera on the rear of the device is a 5-megapixel shooter with a companion single LED flash, while up front there’s a 1.3-megapixel camera. A year ago I might have felt this camera was amazing. Now I merely find it so so. Performance was sub-par in low light and it regular conditions it lacked the “wow” of iPhone 4S, but still really good. I am merely whelmed by it. However the built in Hipstamatic/Instagram functionality is pretty cool and the in camera editing facilities are excellent – knocking the pants of the modest offerings of iOS5.

Settings in general are great – a nice addition to Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest incarnation of Android. It’s really easy to pop in and edit settings on most pages and there lots of little dials I can hit. This is much much better than the iOS system of having to hunt through the settings menu to find things.
As someone who feel foul of O2′s “unlimited data” when using Spotify for the first time, the ability to monitor and restrict data usage was a godsend and it’s great to be able to set hard limits for data usage to prevent hefty fees.

The Nexus uses face recognition to unlock the screen, which is clearly a gimmick but is also fun. I tried with a picture of Milli Vanilli and it didn’t work, so it’s a useful way of settling lots of “you look just like X” type arguments.

The battery life is about a day, which is acceptable in this age of lowered expectations.The screen is huge, which is wonderful for gaming and photo viewing yet annoying for day to day use.
Multi-tasking on the Nexus however was brilliant. There is a dedicated software button (if there can be such a thing) on the side that lets you jump in and out of multi-tasking. There is a swipe gesture that lets you flick away tasks. Multi-tasking uses a large thumbnail of the screen rather than an icon. Again this is much better than iOS’s little tray of icons system – at least in terms of user friendliness.

Overall, everything was very fast and responsive and oversized screen aside, delightful to use. The mobile browser was quick and played nicely with 3′s mobile network across East London.
For more about the Samsung Galaxy Nexus head to Three

[via LatestGadgets]

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Arieso study: iPhone 4S data use is nearly double that of the of iPhone 4

So, first things first. Arieso, the ouftit that conducted this here study, is a company that makes ends meet by "optimizing mobile networks." In other words, there's just a bit of motivation to find results such as these in studies like this. Now that we've got that cleared up, you may be interested in knowing that Apple's iPhone 4S users are consuming around "twice as much data as the previous iPhone model, and even more than iPad tablets due to increasing use of online services like the virtual personal assistant Siri."

Of course, this relates only to those sampled, but there's no question that the inclusion of Siri gives users one more reason to tap into their data plan. According to prior studies, the iPhone 4 used only 1.6x more data than the iPhone 3G, while the iPad 2 consumed 2.5x more data than the iPhone 3G. As time marches on, more and more websites are tailoring themselves for mobile use, and there's obviously no stopping the proliferation of data-sucking apps. Whatever the case, we'd just encourage you to mind that data tier (if you're in one) -- wouldn't want to have to ask Siri how to raise money to cover overages, no would you?

[source Reuters, Arieso]

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