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Monday, 29 December 2014

Samsung Announces The Galaxy Note 4 LTE-A Tri-Band CA Model With Download Speeds Of Up To 300Mbps.

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
10:07

There's no such thing as a connection that's too fast. Samsung seems to be following that sentiment with the latest variant of the Galaxy Note 4, officially announced this weekend. The new Note 4 has something called LTE Advanced Tri-Band Carrier Aggregation, which is a fancy way of saying that its mobile download speed is faster than just about anything else on the market. Samsung claims the phone can download files at a speed of 300mbps, faster than all but the most advanced wired connections.
Galaxy Note 4 LTE-A Tri-Band CA, but Samsung didn't post a photo. Here's a regular Note 4 and a tiny pumpkin instead.

The Tri-Band Carrier Aggregation feature basically opens up multiple LTE bands and initiates a sustained download across three data connections at once, combining them for faster delivery. It's not unlike some of the "download boosters" available for desktop browsers, though this requires considerably more hardware engineering to achieve. Samsung estimates that a 700MB video (a standard-def movie) could be downloaded to the phone in about 19 seconds.
Of course, actually finding a carrier that can provide that kind of bandwidth is no easy task. In order to take full advantage of this Note 4's speed, you'd need to use it on a carrier with three different frequencies of LTE-Advanced spectrum. This is an example of manufacturers outpacing the carriers in terms of hardware innovation, so this Galaxy Note 4 variant is unlikely to be made available outside of South Korea any time soon. (Sprint has announced that it will enable carrier aggregation sometime next year with peak speeds of 150-180mbps, and some carriers allow dual-band aggregation for 50mbps+ speeds.) Samsung did not elaborate on an international launch, though we may see more widespread phones with Tri-Band Carrier Aggregation as new models are introduced next year.

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Sunday, 28 December 2014

CES 2015 Connected Car Panel: How 4G is Driving the Future of Driving!

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
14:01


Connected cars are more common than you think, these days. Whether through an integrated modem buried beneath the dash or a wireless link to a smartphone, an awful lot of the cars on dealership lots these days have some form of connectivity. But, that's just the beginning.

Those integrated connections are getting faster, and it won't be long before 4G LTE in the car is standard fare. Cars as rolling Wi-Fi hotspots? Sure, but that's just the beginning. How about a video feed from your car's security system sent to your phone if the alarm gets triggered? High-quality music streaming directly to the dashboard would be a natural fit, as would instant updates to traffic and maybe even streaming video for your passengers in the back seat.

There are plenty of exciting opportunities once your car gets a high-speed connection to the cloud, and plenty of very encouraging opportunities when cars start talking directly to each other. Vehicle-to-vehicle communications could warn you of everything from ice on the road to fog in the air instantly, and enhanced accident-avoidance enabled by these sorts of systems will absolutely save lives.

But when? How long is it going to take to get this kind of technology, and how much are we going to have to pay for it? This'll gonna revealing with industry experts at 1:00 p.m. PT on Wednesday, January 7, as we discuss driving in a connected future.

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Intel to Power two new 4G Lenovo Smartphones in early 2015.

  Author : Harmanpreet Singh     No comments
13:48

The Chipmaker is expected to expand its Smartphone partnership with Lenovo, introducing phones for both China and the Global market in the coming Weeks.

Intel is taking another step forward in its march toward mobile relevancy.

Lenovo plans to announce two new Intel-powered smartphones in the first two months of next year, according to a person familiar with the devices. Intel will provide both its 64-bit Atom processor and LTE-Advanced modem chips for the Lenovo phones, with one targeting China coming by early February and the other focused on emerging countries, coming in early January. The information comes just weeks before the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas early next month, when Intel, Lenovo and other major tech firms are expected to make a series of product announcements.

The design wins, the person said, mark Intel's first 4G smartphone in China -- by far the biggest smartphone market by current users in the world -- and represent an important milestone for Intel as the country rapidly moves into high-speed 4G technology. The deal follows two previous Intel-powered smartphones released by Chinese vendor Lenovo.

The 4G phones follow Intel's announcement in October of its first 4G smartphone in the US, the Asus PadFone X Mini. Though such product announcements are helpful advances for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker, Intel remains well behind Qualcomm -- which controls two-thirds of the global mobile modem market -- and MediaTek as a supplier of chips for smartphones and tablets.

In a recent interview, Aicha Evans, an Intel vice president focused on wireless technologies, said Intel intends to be a "credible player" in China and around the world in mobile, saying the company is well positioned to grow in the space. "We're determined," she said. "This is going to be a marathon with a lot of sprints in between."

Intel faces tough competition trying to fight its way into mobile -- a market it ignored for years as it instead focused on its core business of supplying chips for personal computers and data centers. But, as mobile's growth has exploded and more customers have transitioned from PCs to tablets, Intel has shifted to pushing hard into mobile in hopes of keeping up its growth. So far, the company has lost billions of dollars trying to expand in the space, and it expects to keep losing money in its mobile business through 2015. Yet Intel executives continue to voice their strong commitment to mobile, even as other chipmakers -- such as Broadcom and Nvidia -- have moved away from supplying smartphone modem and processor chips.

Intel early next year will introduce its first 4G system-on-a-chip under the new SoFIA name. Such chips include both a processor and modem together and are sought after by handset makers because they're smaller in size than separate processor and radio chips, and use less power. That chip could help Intel come closer to matching Qualcomm's Snapdragon system-on-a-chip franchise, but that depends on whether manufacturers embrace SoFIA.

"It's really too early to tell" if Intel can succeed in China and elsewhere, said Christopher Rolland, a chips analyst for FBR Capital Markets. "We don't know how good that 4G product is going to be."

Rolland said Intel is still "a long way off" in mobile but could gain a foothold in China with strong design wins and partnerships.

Intel is late to come to market in China, said Ian Ing, an analyst for MKM Partners, but thanks to the expansion in 4G there, "they've got a good opportunity to participate in some of the strong growth years."

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