Finally, Apple Admits It Made A Huge Mistake By Not Making A Big-Screen Phone
A speculative rendering of a big-screen iPhone 6.
In October 2011, in Berlin, Samsung launched a phone the like of which no one had ever seen before: The Galaxy Note, with a massive 5.3-inch screen.
A lot of people laughed. "We're not so sure that's a good thing," we said at the time. The screen seemed impossibly big -�how would you fit it into your pocket? Is it really supposed to be a tablet? They were given a derisory nickname, "Phablets."
Apple - marketing the 3.5-inch iPhone 4S at the time - largely ignored the trend. In 2012, it launched the iPhone 5 with a slightly larger 4-inch screen. The logic for going bigger but not too big was that many people used phones with one hand, and the 4-inch screen was the biggest you could go still comfortably using it without engaging two hands.
Now, three years later, with the news that Apple will launch two big-screen phones later this year,� it appears that Apple has finally admitted it made a huge mistake by underestimating the demand for big screen phones and the design of them.
It's a dramatic mistake that cuts to the core of Apple's corporate philosophy: careful design. Apple prides itself on the thoughtfulness of its design and the care they put into their products. A big screen presents only a trivial technical challenge to a phonemaker, so this is overtly a design issue and not a technical issue.�
Yet between 2011 and now, Samsung became the market leader in big-screen phones - the Galaxy S3 and S4 also had bigger screens than the iPhone.
But it is the Note, which is huge in Asia and less popular in the West, whose sales are remarkable. Some numbers:
After its launch, the Note sold up to 10 million phones per month.
Samsung sold 38 million Galaxy Notes since 2011.
When the new Note 3 was launched it initially began selling the equivalent of 50% of all iPhone sales, by some calculations (that pace would presumably drop off in the weeks after the launch).
In South Korea, 41% of Androids are Notes.
You can quibble over the statistics. What is not in doubt is that Samsung created a brand new type of smartphone market from scratch, and dominated it.
Apple lagged, and then copied it.
It's a humiliating position to be in for a company that professes to make the best gadgets in the world. It was Apple, after all, who invented the touchscreen smartphone market back in 2007.
In hindsight it seems so obvious: What made the iPhone immediately great was that it had a big screen. Blackberrys and feature phones of the time had tiny little screens for texting and not much else. The big screen ruled.
Yet as the years rolled by, screens got bigger around Apple, and Apple stayed small. As a proportion of available models, the iPhone basically shrank.
Today, the iPhone is noticeably tiny. At CES in Las Vegas this year I noted that "I felt alone as I tapped away on my little iPhone 5. ... My tiny iPhone looked like a dumbphone next to Samsung's Galaxy and Note devices."
So it should come as a huge relief to iPhone fans that Apple is finally catching up. Two - 2!! - 5-inch-plus iPhone screens are on their way. They will doubtless be as functional, reliable and well made as everything else Apple does ...
... Which is why Samsung ought now to be terrified.
This could most likely 've due to a recent software update.
S3 have had major issues trying to roll out the update because of so many errors. Samsung finally went ahead with the update as it tested ok for them, however many have found otherwise.
Solution: contact Samsung or just wait for the fix.
IPhone update to iOS7 also had the same lagging and freezing issues unfortunately.
The unfortunate thing is that once these updates have gone through, it's very difficult to downgrade.
Be patient and be thankful that it still works. Can you imagine if the phone had completely locked out, yep that can happen too.
Samsung users can also try and connect to kies (however it's spelt) there may be an update that's not available OTA (over the air)
While Apple still doesn't allow third parties to tune into the iPhone's keyboard on a platform level, some developers like Fleksy managed to cram their own software into other apps. This isn't perfect solution but it works for some users.
SwiftKey noticed this and wanted to show off its powerful keyboard. So it's apparently preparing (according to EVleaks) to launch an app called SwiftKey Note that will feature the popular Android keyboard.
Those of you who haven't heard about it before should know that SwiftKey is by far the most-popular third-party keyboard app for Android. I would go even further saying it's also the most powerful on-screen keyboard, and I honestly can't imagine returning to some default solution. SwiftKey is that good, and it keeps getting better, learning the words and phrases you frequently use to improve its auto-correct and word-suggestion capabilities. I love it and I'm sure iPhone users will love it, as well.
As for that app, SwiftKey Note will have hard time competing with other note-taking apps like Evernote, but I guess the idea is different here - to showcase the technology and eventually build from there. We'll see how that goes...
HTC Could Be Chasing After The iPhone 5C With Their Next Phone
As much as we may not like them, there is no denying that iPhones sell very well. They have a strong consumer base, and their design, both on an aesthetic and hardware level, seems to be working wonders for them. While Android manufacturers have been coming out with 'iPhone-killers' for years now, it would seem that HTC is taking a different route. Regardless of how well Apple has been doing, even their new colorful iPhone 5C hasn't been enough to stem the tide of Android growth. Going off the old phrase, 'if you can't beat them, join them', it would seem that HTC is taking a leaf out of Apple's book with their upcoming mid-range HTC Desire. Originally, we thought that it would be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, but now it seems like HTC is more likely to be going with an octa-core chip manufactured by MediaTek. The phone itself has been seen in leaks to have very many color options, with a thin plastic design. All in all, it is definitely similar to the iPhone 5C, with its many color options.
While we hope to see this phone at MWC 2014 at the end of February, for now we are operating off rumors. As of now, we think that the phone will have the 8-core MediaTek CPU, sport a 5-inch 720p screen, have 1.5 GB of RAM, an 8MP primary shooter with LED flash, and HTC's Sense 5.5 UI skin over Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. MediaTek, who provides affordable chipsets to many Asian companies, could be a major benefit to HTC. While their phones have been getting better and better, the lesser prices on the chips could, in theory, lead to cheaper handsets down the road. This phone, for example. is expected to be sold for no more than $330 when it releases in China. That is a pretty good price for a phone with those specifications. I'm excited to see what HTC can do with a potential partnership with MediaTek, and I hope that they can continue to remain competitive with both other Android manufacturers and Apple. Competition brings about innovation and, best of all, lower prices for quality goods, and that's what we all want, isn't it? What do you think? Is a phone like this likely to have a similar success as the iPhone 5C, or is HTC doing too little, too late? Let us know in the comments!
This cannot be undone and I am sure it will be greatly appreciated.
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