Sunday, August 12, 2012

Top 10 MWC 2012 phone rumours

hopping for a new smartphone? It's just four weeks until Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona. Here are the juiciest rumours so far...

Best MWC 2012 phone rumours – Samsung Galaxy S III

Samsung Galaxy S III rumours have been looking and sounding pretty tasty already – we've got this prototype phone (above) which turned up in a CES highlights vid made by Sammy, to drool over. Plus details of Samsung's very own Exynos quad-core processor have turned up on the interwebs too – teasing us with the prospect of Sammy's quad-core squaring up against the Tegra 3-packing HTC Edge at MWC.
Samsung's Galaxy S III has a lot to live up to but features could also include 3D capabilities (to hook up to Sammy's 3D TVs), a Super AMOLED Plus 720p display and 4G connectivity.
TouchWiz on top of Android Ice Cream Sandwich is almost a dead cert for the Galaxy S III's OS and interface – and it's also been rumoured that the handset will be packing a healthy 2GB of RAM. Can you say excited?

Best MWC 2012 phone rumours – HTC Edge

The HTC Edge is a pretty badly kept secret – we've known the basic specs of the quad-core Edge for months now. But even though there probably won't be many surprises, it's still set to be one of the highlights of MWC 2012.
First thing – it might not launch as the Edge, we might get treated to the HTC Endeavour or even the HTC Supreme instead. Either way, we're talking a sexy NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor with a secret fifth power-saving core, 1GB of RAM and a killer 4.7in 720p display with pin-sharp 312ppi.
Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 should be running on the HTC Edge from launch with a HTC Sense 4.0 cherry on top, according to our sources, plus the 8MP snapper will have the same amazing f/2.0 aperture that we reported for the HTC Primo and Beats Audio. i-what?

Best MWC 2012 phone rumours – LG X3

LG's quad-core X3 is a newbie to the Mobile World Congress rumour mill but it's crashed straight onto our most-anticipated list this week. Like the HTC Edge, that's a massive 4.7in HD display – and LG is going all out with what should be a beautiful 1280 x 720 resolution screen.
The LG X3 is set to pack a 2,000mAh battery, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and two cams (8MP and 1.3MP) into a sleek and skinny 9mm shell. And, like Sony's Xperia S, it will be one of the first big-name, top-specced smartphones that also sport NFC capabilities.

Best MWC 2012 phone rumours – Sony Nyphon/ Nypon

Sony (Ericsson)'s Nypon – we'll stick with that spelling for now – is also appearing as the LT22i in pics and rumour stories. It looks like an exciting mid-range Android phone, to prop up the new Xperia S in Sony's line-up. We're talking a 4in qHD display – who's counting pixels anyway? – dual-core, Sony-built NovaThor U8500 chipset and 1GB RAM.
Also on the drawing board for the Sony Nypon are an 8MP Exmor R rear-facing camera and Android 2.3 Gingerbread – if those buttons in the pic are to be believed. If the price is right, the Nypon could find itself very popular indeed.

Best MWC 2012 phone rumours – Huawei Diamond series

Eagel-eyed Huawei devotees will notice that we've stuck a picture of the Huawei Ascend P1 S in this rumour round-up. We are aware that this is a real phone – in fact, we played with the skinny smartphone at CES – but we ain't got anything to show you in the way of upcoming Huawei handset snaps just yet.
What we do know is that Huawei is planning to rid itself of the cheap phone-maker moniker with a high-end series of phones named – wait for it, this probably took them ages – Diamond.
The new phones can't possibly trouble the Ascend P1 S on skinniness so we reckon Huawei will beef up the specs and performance to compete with the rest of the big players in this list. We can't wait to see what Huawei does next.

Nokia 808 PureView

Nokia 808 PureView Mobile Phone Features:
  • 3G
  • Wi-Fi
  • 41 MP Camera
  • Nokia Belle OS
  • 1080p HD Video
  • Full Touchacreen
  • Social Networking
Nokia 808 PureView Phone Technical Details: Network:
  • GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
  • WCDMA 850/900/1700/1900/2100 MHz
  • 3G Speed: Up to 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA Up to 5.76 Mbps

Platform:
  • Nokia Belle Operating System
Processor:
  • 1.3GHz Processor
  • Dedicated Graphics Processor with Open GL 2.0 Enables 3D Graphics
Connectivity:
  • Wi-Fi
  • HDMI Support
  • DLNA Support
  • Secure NFC
  • Bluetooth v3.0
  • Micro USB v2.0
  • 3.5 mm Nokia Standard Audio Connector with TV-Out
Battery Life:
  • Talk Time: 2G Up to 11 Hours, 3G Up to 6.5 Hours
  • Standby Time: 2G Up to 465 Hours, 3G Up to 540 Hours
Audio/Video Features:
  • Stereo FM radio
  • Multi Format Audio Player: MP3, M4A, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA
  • Multi Format Video Player: H.264, MPEG-4, VC-1, Flash Lite 4, On2 VP6, Sorenson Spark
  • Ringtones: mp3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, WMA, AMR-NB, AMR-WB Ringtones
Display Screen:
  • 4.0″ Inch ClearBlack AMOLED (640 x 360) Pixels Capacitive Touchscreen
Camera:
  • 41 Megapixels Camera
  • Highest Performance Carl Zeiss Optics
  • 1080p HD Video Recording @ 30 fps
Design & Build:
  • Touchscreen Bar
Sensors:
  • Digital Compass
  • Accelerometer
  • Proximity Sensor
  • A-GPS with Google Maps
Memory:
  • 16GB Internal Storage
  • Expandable Up to 48GB
Pre-Loaded Apps & Messaging:
  • Social Networking: Facebook, Twitter
  • Email: Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Windows Live, Hotmail And Other Popular POP/IMAP Services, Mail for Exchange
  • Messengers: Gtalk, Yahoo, Live
Others:
  • Detailed Contact Information
  • Multiple Calendars with Meeting Request Support
  • To-do list
  • Notes
  • Recorder
  • Calculator
  • Clock
Dimensions & Weight:
  • 123.9 x 60.2 x 13.9 mm
  • 169 gm
  • Volume: 95.5 cc

 


The Nokia 808 PureView is a Symbian Belle powered smartphone, first unveiled on 27 February 2012 at the Mobile World Congress. It is the first smartphone to feature Nokia's PureView imaging technology based on a new 41 megapixel oversampling 1/1.2" sensor and a high resolution f/2.4 Zeiss all-aspherical 1-group lens. See examples.
The 808 won the award for "Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet" at Mobile World Congress 2012.

PureView Pro is an imaging technology used in the Nokia 808 PureView device. It is the combination of a 1/1.2" large, very high resolution 41Mpix with high performance Carl Zeiss optics. The large sensor enables pixel oversampling, which means the combination of many pixels into one perfect pixel. PureView imaging technology delivers high image quality, lossless zoom, and improved low light performance (see below). It dispenses with the usual scaling/interpolation model of digital zoom used in virtually all smartphones, as well as optical zoom used in most digital cameras, where a series of lens elements moves back and forth to vary the magnification and field of view. Instead, it will give around 3x lossless zoom for stills, and 4x zoom in full HD 1080p, for 720p HD video, 6x lossless zoom and for nHD (640x360) video, 12x zoom.
  




Resolution processing image sensor

PureView Pro sensor has an active area of 7728 x 5368 pixels, totaling over 41Mpix. Depending on the aspect ratio chosen by the user, it will use 7728 x 4354 pixels for 16:9 images/videos, or 7152 x 5368 pixels for 4:3 images/videos. What happens next depends on the settings and whether or not zoom is used. But to give an idea, the default still image setting is 5Mpix at 16:9, and for video, 1080p at 30fps. Using these settings, the zoom is around 3x for stills and 4x for video. Conventional digital zoom tends to scale up images from a relatively low resolution, resulting in poor image quality.
The image sensor is a new resolution processing image sensor, which is capable not only of delivering parts of its pixels, but of down- or oversampling its resolution by having its own on-chip image processor, highly reducing external processing needs and data rates as well as image noise (see noise shaping) when lower resolutions (or HD video) are needed. Additionally this provides very high image resolution. Images up to 38 megapixels can be taken at full resolution at 4:3 aspect ratio and 34 megapixels at 16:9 ratio. The PureView is a pixel oversampling technology used by Nokia that converts an image taken at full resolution into 3, 5 or 8 megapixels to eliminate noise in the image.


Zeiss 1-group lens

The optic is a 1-group lens, which is based on a shiftable fixed-focus lens: identical to the highly regarded prime lenses in most Zeiss Planar or Tessar optics, focus is achieved by varying the distance to the image sensor (unit focusing lens). This construction has the advantage that no movable focus group is needed. Considerable movable (focus-range) lens groups need a minimum of one additional adaptive lens element in both the moved group and the stationary group, increasing the number of elements by at least two. This increases unwanted reflections as well as overall tolerances and therefore decreases sharpness.
Any 1-group lens is additionally an aperture-less lens, further increasing the freedom of lens element arrangement and allowing the designer to optimize the lens to only one f-stop. The lens consists of only 1 group with molded elements, which gives a highly stable, precise mechanical alignment. The lenses are partly made of plastic, which provides sufficient stability at this size and as a 1-group lens and has the significant advantage of making it possible to use extreme aspheric shaped lens elements.[5]
5 all-aspherical lens elements are used, making it possible to increase border-sharpness and lower distortion and astigmatism. The high refractive index, low-dispersion glass additionally helps reduce chromatic aberrations. The disadvantage of a 1-group lens is that no aperture is possible; a neutral density filter with approximately ND8 (3 f-stops) is instead used. Although the lens is named a Vario-Tessar, it has almost nothing in common with the 4 element in 3 group, non-aspherical original Tessar.
Due to the comparatively large image sensor format of 1/1.2" and the comparatively fast lens with f/2.4, the camera has a quite shallow depth of field of approximately f/8, equivalent to a 35mm full-frame or approximately f/5, equivalent to a APS-C DSLR with the same angle of view (without zoom).

Zoom

Zoom with the PureView Pro works in a manner only partly related to the digital zoom principle. With no zoom, the full area of the sensor corresponding to the aspect ratio is used. Although it is only possible in this case to use the full resolution, pixel oversampling can be used to combine many pixels to calculate a single pixel and reduce image resolution. This will filter away visual noise from the image and greatly reduce noise in low-light conditions.
The limit of the zoom is reached when the selected output resolution becomes the same as the input resolution. That means once the area of the sensor reaches 3072 x 1728, the zoom limit is reached. So the zoom is always provides the true image resolution the user wants. The level of pixel oversampling is highest when zoom is not used. It gradually decreases until the maximum zoom is hit, where there is no oversampling. At this stage, PureView Pro optics and pixels start behaving in a more conventional way. But because only the center of the optics is used, the best optical performance is achieved – including low distortion, no vignetting and highest levels of resolved detail.

 Autofocus

PureView Pro comes with improved autofocus also for video as the optics with the larger image sensor provide a relatively shallow depth of field. PureView Pro gives continuous auto focus in all shooting modes, close-up (Macro) focus, Face detection, Touch focus with easy manually selected focus point and Hyperfocal distance focus for defined depth of field, for extreme focus speed or when no reliable focus is possible due to darkness.

 Video

Most smartphone manufacturers crop off a section of the sensor to ease the processing load. In contrast, the on-chip oversampling image processor of PureView Pro enables oversampling of all 38Mega-pixels even at the high data rates of 1080p with 30 fps. Plus, it provides lossless zooming capability, which is output resolution dependent. Full HD 1080p gives 4x zoom; 720p HD video, 6x lossless zoom; and for nHD (640x360) video, 12x zoom. In addition, encoding is up to 25Mbps in 1080p H.264/MPEG-4 HD video format. The PureView Pro sensor integrates a special video processor that handles pixel scaling before sending the required number to the main image processor.