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Displaying items by tag: LTE

Wednesday, 31 October 2012 15:09

Google and LG’s Nexus 4 Won't Have LTE

Nexus 4

Google's upcoming phone, the Nexus 4 will launch at an extremely competitive price of $299.00 with no contract. How did they get the price so low? Part of the answer is its lack of America's favorite 4G network, LTE. That's correct, it will be a 3G/WIFI only device. It will lauch with Android 4.2, and a quad core Snapdragon 1.5 Ghz processor, which will make processing material on the phone quite fast. But, anything that needs to be downloaded will be at roughly the same speeds users experience on their networks now with their current smart phones.

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wifi

Researchers at several prestigious universities like MIT, the University of Porto in Portugal, Harvard, Caltech and the Technical University of Munich, have managed to increase the throughput of existing wireless networks by ten times. They have done it without adding base stations, expanding bandwidth range or boosting the power of the transmitter. Instead, they used a mathematical formula that eliminates the need to re-send lost packets, which are blamed for network congestion and the reduction of useful bandwidth.

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Friday, 28 September 2012 07:01

Qualcomm Snapdragon brings fresh blood

Snapdragon-games

A few new high level S4 quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processors have been released for the mass market. The company already has their processors in some of the most popular smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, HTC Windows Phone 8X, Nokia Lumia 820 and 920, Samsung ATIV S and Motorola Droid RAZR. Now they will push an upgraded version of their shining stars MSM8225 and MSM8625. They will bear the same names with just adding Q on the end. The next generation of Snapdragons will come in the first quarter of 2013.

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broke-apple

Apple’s iPhone 5 should launch tomorrow, but it might be a launch that is short lived if Samsung and HTC have anything to say about it. Both companies plan to aggressively pursue Apple over the use of Long Term Evolution (LTE) in their products HTC already has a complaint into the ITC.  To make matters worse for Apple (who is trying the invalidation tactic now) Judge Thomas Pender has ruled that HTC’s patents are most likely valid saying “Clear and convincing means something to me. I have to be pretty darn certain a U.S. patent is invalid”. Apple has also tried to claim that HTC only bought the patents to sue Apple. Judge Pender was quick with the reply: “I don't care if they bought these patents to sue you or not. They are a property right”.

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xlarge kindle-fire

Hot on the heels of the rumor that Facebook was going to release a phone we saw another rumor popup that Amazon would be the next contender for a branded smartphone. These rumors were fueled further when Brandon Watson left Microsoft for Amazon in February.  Watson had been in charge of the developer experience for Windows Phone 7 and now is one of the people that help to push the Kindle app out to multiple devices.

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tegradimeOne of the things that has always bothered us is the continual lack of improvement in the smartphone market in the US. Although we get to read about new technologies for “world” phones and drool over the latest products from companies like Samsung and HTC which sport quad core SoCs (System on Chip) under their screens when they finally reach the US market they are shadows of what people are getting in other markets.

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nV_LogonVidia has taken one step closer to being a major player in the smart phone market. This step is the culmination of their purchase of Icera specifically for their LTE technology. Back when nVidia first announced the purchase it was in direct competition to Qualcomm who is seen as one of nVidia’s major opponents. nVidia new they needed to either license or acquire the technology so that they could integrate a high speed cellular modem into their Tegra SoC for future products.

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TransformerSo Asus has released the specifications of their next generation Transformers and as we told you they are not getting rid of the Tegra 3 for their HD version of the popular tablet. The original rumor was that Asus was replacing the Tegra 3 for a Qualcomm SoC. In truth we find that Asus is entering the realm of cellular tablets.

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Friday, 02 September 2011 21:44

Will AT&T Offer a Compromise to the DOJ?

fingersWell, well, well it looks like the folks at AT&T are going to have a go at settling the Anti-Trust suit brought by the DOJ. Originally some statements from the Telecommunications giant had indicated they would fight this in court. Now it according to a report from Reuters they are looking for a compromise that will allow the deal to go through without the need to bother any judges. This would seem to indicate that the deal is a bit shady in the first place, despite AT&T’s claims to the contrary.

But what kind of compromise would AT&T need to make to get this merger deal through? We know that T-Mobile does not care one way or the other. In fact they have a rather healthy failed merger clause that gives them a nice chunk of money in the event it is blocked. So the internet and the press begin to speculate and analyst put in their two cents. Right now there are rumors that AT&T will agree to sell off 25% of T-Mobile to its competitors. It will also probably agree to maintain the pricing and plan structure that T-Mobile has (for a predetermined period of time). These all sound good on the surface, but they hardly address the core argument in the suit. You see the DOJ put it very bluntly; if AT&T and T-Mobile merge it will reduce the competitive market by 25% and put the GSM Market firmly in AT&T’s hands.

This is something that is absolutely not in the interest of consumers, but then again most business dealings are not. AT&T is in a rough position, with the loss of the iPhone to Verizon and the possibility that Sprint will get the iPhone5 later this year AT&T no longer has a truly big seller and the fact that they banked on the iPhone instead of working on 4G put them behind their competitors. Now they have to act or they will fall even farther behind. Instead of investing in rebuilding their aging network they want to buy up one that is working towards modernization and pickup quite a few customers in the mix.

For now it is all in the hands of the Federal Regulators and perhaps even judges as this merger moves towards its fate; whatever that is

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Clearwire_Logo_corporateNot all that long ago (about a year to be exact) I engaged in a little online debate with someone about LTE Vs WiMax. At the time I was told that LTE was better and that WiMax would be a losing battle. I agreed with the comment about speed, but hastily added that MiMax is not a losing battle. You see the problem is that people often misunderstand that WiMax and LTE are not different hardware technologies (at least not on the backbone) but differ in the protocols used to push the data across that hardware. Clearwire was aware of this when they built their network; they knew that they could get WiMax out now and still shift over faster and for less money than the much of the competition can get LTE off the ground.

The down side is that Clearwire waited too long to start the conversion and have lost quite a bit of money on this deal. Of course they also could have had contractual restrictions that required them to reach a certain level of loss before they could make the shift in existing markets (read Sprint/Nextel)… that is pure guess work on my part but I have heard of worse in business. No matter what the reason the thing is that Clearwire is going to make the switch and will start in their existing markets to make the shift less costly and also to start off building revenue on the investment.

Now we have to figure out if the existing Radios inside the current handsets can be “flashed” to support the LTE protocol.

Source CNET

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