Daily News Courier

Intel to showcase new dual-core smartphones at Mobile World Congress

At CES Intel showed for the first time its new, emerging market orientated, Lexington chips. During the keynote presentation though, mention was made of the next generation of performance orientated, dual-core chips for higher end smartphone offerings. Dubbed Clover Trail+, and based on Intel's Atom Z2580, CES also threw up the first smartphone powered by the chip, the monstrous 5.5 inch Lenovo K900. While the K900 is destined only for select Asian markets and Russia at this time, Intel has now promised we'll get to see more Clover Trail+ devices later this month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. 

Other than that, we really don't have much to go on. We're promised a look at the new dual-core smartphones, as well as another look at the lower spec Lexington based devices for emerging markets. OEM partners are included, so we should be seeing actual devices that actual consumers can purchase, not just Intel reference devices. If the K900 is anything to go by though, we're pretty excited to see what Intel can bring for the future.

Source: Intel

A Look Back at Predictive Assistants and Lurching Giants

In 2012, hardware and software brought us usability advances, faster chips, and gesture control.

One of the most interesting threads of innovation in computing over the past 12 months can be traced back to the preceding year. In 2011, Apple

Cloud-Powered GPS Chip Slashes Smartphone Power Consumption

A Microsoft Research project offloads data and calculations to save battery life.

If you

Samsung ‘conducting an internal review’ on Exynos vulnerability

There was potentially worrying news for Samsung phone owners this weekend, as a serious kernel security vulnerability was identified in Android devices running Exynos 4210 and 4412 chips. The list of affected devices includes some of the most popular Samsung phones, like the international Galaxy S2 and Galaxy S3, and all Galaxy Note 2 models. The exploit in Samsung's kernel could give a malicious app free reign over a device's memory, allowing it to take complete control of it.

We reached out to Samsung for comment, and the company has today informed us that it is "currently in the process of conducting an internal review" into the matter. That's not a whole lot of information, but it at least confirms that Samsung's aware of the issue and is looking into it.

We'll keep you apprised of any further developments. In the meantime, if you're concerned about whether your own phone could be affected by this security vulnerability, check out our full report from yesterday.

More: The Samsung Exynos kernel exploit – what you need to know

Samsung ‘conducting an internal review’ on Exynos vulnerability

There was potentially worrying news for Samsung phone owners this weekend, as a serious kernel security vulnerability was identified in Android devices running Exynos 4210 and 4412 chips. The list of affected devices includes some of the most popular Samsung phones, like the international Galaxy S2 and Galaxy S3, and all Galaxy Note 2 models. The exploit in Samsung's kernel could give a malicious app free reign over a device's memory, allowing it to take complete control of it.

We reached out to Samsung for comment, and the company has today informed us that it is "currently in the process of conducting an internal review" into the matter. That's not a whole lot of information, but it at least confirms that Samsung's aware of the issue and is looking into it.

We'll keep you apprised of any further developments. In the meantime, if you're concerned about whether your own phone could be affected by this security vulnerability, check out our full report from yesterday.

More: The Samsung Exynos kernel exploit – what you need to know

Samsung now manufacturing 10 nanometer 64GB flash storage chips

The times, they are a changin'. Devices are getting thinner and thinner, meaning space between the battery and screen is a premium. Samsung has announced that its come to a new milestone in its flash memory division, dropping down to a 10nm (nanometer)-class manufacturing process for 64GB chips. That doesn't really mean much on the face of it, but the end result is a chip that's physically 20-percent smaller, and has nearly double the performance in terms of IOPS (input/output per second) at 2,000 write and 5,000 read. These new chips have sequential read and write speeds of 260MB/s and 50MB/s, respectively, which is over 10 times faster than an external Class 10 SDcard.

That's some serious performance improvements over external storage, and at the capacities that these chips are available in, you're not exactly making any compromises. Also remember that Samsung manufactures these components for more than just their own devices. Many different manufacturers utilize Samsung for device components, so we'll hopefully start seeing these new, faster chips in phones and tablets across the board soon.

Source: Samsung; Via: Engadget

Samsung Wants More Money From Apple

AppleInsider reports that Samsung has apparently put its prices up for its mobile processors, for Apple alone. Reporting on the price hike, MarketWatch says that according to anonymous sources, Samsung has increased the price of its chips, such as the iPhone 5?s A6 chip and the fourth-gen iPad?s A6X processor, by 20%. As you might imagine, Apple initially refused to pay the extra, but was not able to find anyone else to make the chips that it requires. Interestingly enough, the chips are made at Samsung?s plant in Austin, Texas. As AppleInsider notes, recent rumours have said that Apple has been trying to move its chip production away from Samsung, and Samsung has even been expecting to lose some of its Apple chip orders, but it seems that this is not about to happen anytime soon. Apple has even hired a former Samsung chip designer, Jim Mergard, but it doesn?t look like it is ready to go with its own chips just yet.

Source: Samsung reportedly hits Apple with 20% price increase for iPhone, iPad chips

The Pressure

Intel missed out on the shift to mobile computing. Now it finds itself in a precarious position.

Since 2000, Intel has done just about everything right in its core business, maintaining its dominance of the market for PC microprocessors and putting substantial distance between itself and competitors in the market for server chips. And yet the company finds itself in a very tough position: computers are going mobile, and Intel

Moore

The CEO of ARM says power-efficient chips for mobile devices will move into desktops, laptops, and servers.

Companies like Apple and Samsung are the public face of the smartphone and tablet boom, but they all rely on ARM, the British company that licenses the energy-efficient processor designs required by mobile devices. Those chips were once considered significantly less powerful than the x86 processors found in desktops, laptops, and servers

Apple ? dumping Intel chips by 2017?

Bloomberg reported today some rumors which seem to indicate that in the near future, Apple will renounce the partnership with Intel and will drop their chip architecture standard in favor of their own design. The year predicted for this transition has been set to 2017. Apparently Cupertino is slowly trying to distance itself from all collaborators in order to start in-house production of the units needed to build their popular devices.

Apple just introduced its own and very powerful Apple A6 ARM processor that comes with the iPhone 5 and the freshly released fourth generation iPad. But what the tech giant is really going after is implementing its processors and chips into future generations of desktops and laptops like the Mac line. By doing this Apple might end up inspiring others, but there?s no surprise there. Sergis Mushell an analyst working with Gartner Inc commented:

?Apple is a trendsetter, and once they did their own chip many others may pursue a similar path. ?If mobility is more important than functionality, then we will have a completely different environment than we are dealing with today.?

Apple?s love affair with Intel started seven years ago, when Cupertino wanted to implement faster and cooler chips into their products. To do so, it dumped the partnership it had with Motorola Inc, and IBM. Apple plans to make increasingly smaller and thinner products without axing any performance parameters and producing their own chips might be a consequence of this trend.

When asked to comment on the matter at hand, spokesman for Apple, Bill Evans declined to answer and Intel indicated that all questions should go to Cupertino.

By Radu

Source – Apple Said to Be Exploring Switch From Intel for Mac – Bloomberg