Mobile World Congress 2012 (27th Feb)

The HTC One S (dual core mid range) looks about as nice a phone as I have seen about. Lovely thing. For the company's sake, I hope this is the core of their range for this year, without the farcical dilution of the brand with 78 **** poor variations on themes or anything approaching the Rhyme design.
 
I'm impressed with HTCs line up, all 3 phones look very nice. The One X with that white polycarbonate unibody is a bit tasty. Me want.
 
I know I'm a grumpy sod sometimes, but am I the only one bored to tears with the offerings so far? A repetitive series of black and grey, 4"ish screened Android devices all claiming to be that little bit faster than the last, all claiming amazing cameras, all claiming something new when, in fact, they look 90% the same as every other device that manufacturer has released.

Give me something new, please.

Bah humbug.
 
? The phone market is as exciting now as it has been since '92.

Lots of suppliers/brands
Equal advances on software as well as hardware
Three leaders (apple, Google, Nokia/Ms) all with very different motivations and conspiracy theories
Mobile operators who have been completely out-maneuvered
A plethora of form factors

Things to remember
They are trying to improve battery life, but some areas of science are a bit tricky. Most people want the rich functionality at the cost of plugging in.
Screen manufacturers build their production plants to make certain sizes, so they get volume and therefore lower cost. Making every size would make them too expensive for us.
 
the phone industry has done more to progress the photo industry than the camera manufacturers have done in 30 years.

Finally, once the leaders emerge in this space, then you'll get lots of variants.
Nokia drew the analogy of the car industry - same base components, but with multiple 'variants' built. If you drive an Audi, VW,soda, seat you'll understand this.
 
I know I'm a grumpy sod sometimes, but am I the only one bored to tears with the offerings so far? A repetitive series of black and grey, 4"ish screened Android devices all claiming to be that little bit faster than the last, all claiming amazing cameras, all claiming something new when, in fact, they look 90% the same as every other device that manufacturer has released.

Give me something new, please.

Bah humbug.

Rob it's not that bad, at first they all seem the same but you need to appreciate the details. Oh and the Galaxy Beam has a built in projector which is quite a big detail :cool:

I'd quite like to see a few physical keyboard solutions, maybe Nokia will show a WP7 handset with sliding qwerty.
 
Nokia have just announced a bunch of new phones including:

Lumia 610 - 189 Euros available Q2, Nokia's budget WP7 handset
Lumia 900 - 480 Euros available in the UK in Q2
Nokia 808 PureView - 450 Euros available in May. Symbian OS handset. This phone is apparently rocking a 41MP Carl Zeiss sensor! :eek:

Nokia 808 Pureview specs:

1.3GHz single-core chip
4 inch AMOLED 'clear black' display (360 x 640), curved gorilla glass
Symbian Belle OS
512MB of RAM
16GB Storage (expandable)
Big fat camera with xenon flash
 
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Rob it's not that bad, at first they all seem the same but you need to appreciate the details. Oh and the Galaxy Beam has a built in projector which is quite a big detail :cool:

I'd quite like to see a few physical keyboard solutions, maybe Nokia will show a WP7 handset with sliding qwerty.

I do appreciate the detail, I test and play with these things all the time (granted, sometimes pre-production with some rough edges). But there are very few innovative ideas at the moment, just an evolution of the current options.

Pico Projects are a big deal, for sure. These will become the norm in the future no doubt, so it's good to see them hitting the consumer 'high street' market.

But what else? Everything is a bit better, but what's new? You could count on one hand the new ideas on show. That's what bores me.

If you want a smartphone you're in a better position than ever before, just the same as if you want a new car, a TV, a fridge, a frying pan... evolution of an existing product will always mean current products are better than before. Nothings new, though.
 
I guess it depends on what you consider to be innovative. How about a quad core smart phone that you can fully submerge under water for 30 minutes? Or a projector that can beam an image up to 50-inches in size? Check out this PDF which explains how the Pureviews camera works, to me this is innovative but I suppose to some people it's still just a camera. Yes a lot is just evolution, but a smartphone is a smartphone and we're getting to a stage where it's becoming more clearly defined at least in terms of hardware.
 
If you want a smartphone you're in a better position than ever before, just the same as if you want a new car, a TV, a fridge, a frying pan... evolution of an existing product will always mean current products are better than before. Nothings new, though.

What exactly do you want to see then that you would class as innovative?

BTW, your car has a steering wheel and not a pair of joy sticks for a reason. :smashin:
 
An In-car joystick was tried once in a production car. It was innovative. Flawed and it failed miserably, but innovative none the less :)

The definition of innovative is the creation of a new idea, method or process. All we're actually seeing is ongoing development of existing ideas and as I said before, I bet you could count on one hand how many new ideas we've seen. I'm not complaining about the quality, the performance, the styling or anything else... just the few examples of brand new ideas.

Look back to the launch of the Atrix, that was innovative. Taking the quad-core power we see today and extending it to a developed version of this idea would actually make decent use of the power. There are endless opportunities to expand this theme, for desktop computing and gaming especially. You don't need 6Ghz of total processing power to run a mobile game or check your email - that's for marketing, not innovation. But taking that processing and graphics power and turning it into a console-style gaming platform (Android already has the Playstation brand, Microsoft have XBox), that would be new. Expanding the desktop idea is evolution, creating a new genre of console gaming base around a mobile and with dedicated hardware to match, that would be innovative.
 
The Samsung Beam looks intriguing, not sure of its use in the day to day use of a mobile device. Time will tell.

Liking the look of the ViewSonic ViewPhone 4e - nice design with the yellow and black.

I'd love to see some real pictures with Nokia 808 41mp camera! (or a 38mp photo). It has a 4x zoom - would that be optical or digital? Optical would be great. Digital, hmm not so...
 
Nokia have just announced a bunch of new phones including:

Lumia 610 - 189 Euros available Q2, Nokia's budget WP7 handset
Lumia 900 - 480 Euros available in the UK in Q2
Nokia 808 PureView - 450 Euros available in May. Symbian OS handset. This phone is apparently rocking a 41MP Carl Zeiss sensor! :eek:

Nokia 808 Pureview specs:

1.3GHz single-core chip
4 inch AMOLED 'clear black' display (360 x 640), curved gorilla glass
Symbian Belle OS
512MB of RAM
16GB Storage (expandable)
Big fat camera with xenon flash

Yup, I was gobsmaked with the 808 too!

There are sample images at the end of this article - amazing! :eek:

Nokia 808 PureView

Cheers
Moosh
 
I'd love to see some real pictures with Nokia 808 41mp camera! (or a 38mp photo). It has a 4x zoom - would that be optical or digital? Optical would be great. Digital, hmm not so...

It's neither optical or digital, it's something different (that'll be innovation right Rob? ;)), basically...

"When you zoom with the Nokia 808 PureView, in effect you are just selecting the relevant area of the sensor. So with no zoom, the full area of the sensor corresponding to the aspect ratio is used. The limit of the zoom (regardless of the resolution setting for stills or video) is reached when the selected output resolution becomes the same as the input resolution. For example, with the default setting of 5Mpix (3072 x 1728), once the area of the sensor reaches 3072 x 1728, you've hit the zoom limit. This means the zoom is always true to the image you want."

geddit?
 
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Isn't that an alternative approach to digital zoom, just with such a high initial resolution that the end result of the zoom is still high resolution?

All a digital zoom does is crop the overall image by selecting the pixel count it needs.
All this is doing is selecting the resolution on-sensor, but you still have a reduced output.

A true zoom would be the image resolution remains exactly the same whether it is fully-wide or fully-zoomed (telescopic).

The benefit here is the reduced amount of software processing needed, which is a clever evolution of a digital zoom ;)
 
Ahh i see it now...

if you were to have a optical zoom you would need the physical glass that extends, which would be called a compact camera....:D

The benefit here is the reduced amount of software processing needed, which is a clever evolution of a digital zoom ;)

Any improvements are welcome as increase of current digital zooms just produces a pixelated mess!
 
Isn't that an alternative approach to digital zoom, just with such a high initial resolution that the end result of the zoom is still high resolution?

All a digital zoom does is crop the overall image by selecting the pixel count it needs.
All this is doing is selecting the resolution on-sensor, but you still have a reduced output.

A true zoom would be the image resolution remains exactly the same whether it is fully-wide or fully-zoomed (telescopic).

The benefit here is the reduced amount of software processing needed, which is a clever evolution of a digital zoom ;)


A 5mpx resolution image will still be 5mpx when fully zoomed in. Pureview uses 'pixel oversampling' which means it combines several pixels into one super pixel, therefore if you have the camera set to the default setting of 5MP, you are taking a 3072x1728 size photo but with tons more pixels condensed into it (the sensor is capturing 7728 x 5368 pixels totalling 41MP). So when you zoom in there is no upscaling involved like in a digital zoom, it will zoom in until it reaches 3072x1728. Therefore no loss of quality, and no bulky sliding lenses.

These sample shots look amazing:

http://www.engadget.com/photos/nokia-808-pureview-first-sample-shots/#4847871
 
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A 5mpx resolution image will still be 5mpx when fully zoomed in. Pureview uses 'pixel oversampling' which means it combines several pixels into one super pixel, therefore if you have the camera set to the default setting of 5MP, you are taking a 3072x1728 size photo but with tons more pixels condensed into it (the sensor is capturing 7728 x 5368 pixels totalling 41MP). So when you zoom in there is no upscaling involved like in a digital zoom, it will zoom in until it reaches 3072x1728. Therefore no loss of quality, and no bulky sliding lenses.

These sample shots look amazing:

Nokia 808 PureView first sample shots - Engadget Galleries

Absolutely, but as it's on a 41MP sensor it's simply choosing the part of the overall image it wants. It's a clever idea for sure, but fairly simple maths :)

The results look incredible, the detail - even the background detail - looks superb.
 
Absolutely, but as it's on a 41MP sensor it's simply choosing the part of the overall image it wants. It's a clever idea for sure, but fairly simple maths

That's not really how I understand it. It's using the whole sensor, but it is oversampling and processing down to the desired final output resolution. We need to get a camera expert in here to fully explain. :)
 
Here's a list I've put together of all (?) the new handsets shown at MWC along with a few specs, they're all running
Android except where stated. Obviously some might not reach the UK...

Asus Padfone - 4.3" Super AMOLED, 1.5Ghz dual core (plugs into the back of tablet)
Fujitsu unamed quad core handset, 4.6" 1028x720, 1.5Ghz Tegra 3, waterproof
HTC One X - 4.7" Super LCD 1280x720, 1.5Ghz quad core, polycarbonate body
HTC One S - 4.3" AMOLED 960x540, 1.5Ghz dual core
HTC One V - 3.7" AMOLED 800x480, 1Ghz single core
Huawei Ascend D Quad - 4.5" 1280x720, 1.2/1.5Ghz quad core
Huawei Ascend D1 - 4.5" IPS 1280x720, 1.5Ghz dual core
Huawei Ascend G300 - 4" 800x480, 1Ghz single core
LG Optimus 4X - 4.7" IPS, 1.5Ghz quad core
LG Optimus Vu - 5" IPS 1024x768, 1.5Ghz dual core, comes with stylus
LG Optimus 3D Max - 4.3" 1.2Ghz dual core
LG Optimus L7 - 4.3"
LG Optimus L5 - 4.0"
LG Optimus L3 - 3.2"
Nokia 808 Pureview - 4" AMOLED 360x640, 1.3Ghz single core, 41Mpx, Nokia Belle OS
Nokia Lumia 610 - 3.7" 800x400, WP7 OS
Nokia Asha 302 - 2.4" S40
Nokia Asha 203 - 2.4" S40
Nokia Asha 202 - 2.4" S40
Orange Santa Clara - 4" 1024x600, 1.6Ghz single core
Panasonic Eluga Power - 5" LCD 1280x720, 1.5Ghz dual core, waterproof
Panasonic Eluga - 4.3" OLED 960x540, 1Ghz dual core, waterproof
Samsung Galaxy Beam - 4" projector phone, 1Ghz dual core
Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 - 3.8 inch, 800Mhz dual core
Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 - 3.2 inch, 800Mhz single core
Sony Xperia P - 4" 960x540, 1Ghz dual core, aluminium unibody
Sony Xperia U - 3.5" 854x480, 1Ghz dual core, flashing light
ZTE Era - 4.3" 960x540, 1.3Ghz quad core
ZTE Mimosa X - 4.3" 960x540, 1.2Ghz dual core
ZTE PF112 HD - 4.5" 1028x720, unknown processor
ZTE Orbit - 4" 800x480, 1Ghz single core, WP7 OS
ZTE PF200 - 4.3" 1.2Ghz
ZTE N910 - ? 1.5Ghz single core
ZTE Acqua - 4" 800x480, 1Ghz single core
ZTE Kis - 3.5" 480x320, 800Mhz
 
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