Samsung to push out Android 4.1 to Galaxy S III smartphones in US

Dates to roll out updates will be decided by carriers

Samsung Mobile on Wednesday said it would start rolling out Android 4.1, code-named Jelly Bean, to Galaxy S III smartphones in the U.S.

Galaxy S III smartphones run on Android 4.0, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich. The Jelly Bean update will be rolled out over-the-air and also via Samsung's Kies software. Individual carriers offering the Galaxy S III, including AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular, will separately announce specific roll-out dates.

Google announced Android 4.1 in June, and vendors have just recently started rolling it out to smartphones and tablets.

Galaxy S III smartphones in Europe are already being updated to Jelly Bean. The updated OS offers a new user interface and new multimedia capabilities.

The OS is the first version built for tablets and smartphones. Compared to predecessors, Jelly Bean is faster, navigation is smoother, and an improved keyboard can better predict words being typed out. Other improvements include revamped notification and text and voice search capabilities. A new feature in Android 4.1 called Google Now provides voice search and also information on weather, traffic, navigation and other data in a single interface.

Samsung is also adding its own apps including "custom" integration of AllShare, which will allow wireless sharing of multimedia files between among devices including PCs, tablets and TVs, the company said. The phone maker is also building in technology to connect Bluetooth devices with just one touch.

Google already offers the Nexus 7 tablet with Android 4.1, and Asustek has pushed out the OS to its tablets. Motorola has pushed out Jelly Bean to some of its tablets and said it would update latest smartphones by end of the year. HTC has also said it would update its One smartphones to Jelly Bean in the future.

Source: computerworld.com

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Samsung Galaxy S III display outdoes iPhone 5's, teardown reveals

HS iSuppli analyst says differences likely not enough to affect buying decisions.

Samsung Galaxy S III's display is thinner and has a greater range of colors than that of the Apple iPhone 5, an IHS iSuppli teardown analysis revealed Tuesday.

But IHS iSuppli analyst Vinita Jakhanwal noted that the differences between the displys are fairly subtle and likely don't matter to users.

Jakhanwal said Apple chooses features in products like the iPhone 5 that are designed to yield profits and "deliver a superior customer experience, rather than to provide technology for technology's sake."

The iSuppli teardown revealed that the iPhone 5 display has a 1.5 mm thickness, while the Galaxy S III is only 1.1 mm. Also, the iPhone 5 displays 72% of the colors in the NTSC (National Television System Committee) standard, while the Galaxy S III reaches 100% of those colors.

Overall, the iPhone 5 is 1 millimeter thinner than the Galaxy S III, which IHS said was most likely due to a fatter Galaxy S III battery.

Apple used in-cell technology in the iPhone 5 LCD display.

The in-cell technology eliminates the standalone touch panel layers used in the iPhone 4S, making the iPhone 5 18% thinner than its predecessor.

The in-cell technology's elimination of the separate touch overlay layer allows more light to emit from the display without added refraction and glare from added touch layers, IHS said. As a result the iPhone 5's display provides a "more vibrant and crisper image with improved color saturation than the iPhone 4S."

"The lower color gamut measurement (72% of the NTSC standard compared to the Galaxy S III's fully meeting the standard) may not necessarily make the iPhone 5 display look worse than the Galaxy S III," IHS noted.

The iPhone 5 provides more accurate and realistic colors and contrasts as a result of better calibration, higher brightness and superior power efficiency of the display, it said.

Jakhanwal noted that some reviewers of the Galaxy S III have found that its colors look "oversaturated and unrealistic."

IHS said that the Galaxy S III uses an active-matrix organize light emitting diode (AMOLED) display in contrast to the low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) liquid crystal display (LCD) of the iPhone 5.

AMOLEDs don't use a backlight and potentially have better power efficiency than LCDs, IHS said.

Still IHS said a smartphone's battery life is dependent on many factors other than the display's power consumption, and didn't draw any conclusions about power consumption in either of the smartphone displays studied.

Source: computerworld.com

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Samsung delivers Galaxy S3 remote-wipe bug fix

Samsung has released a fix for a critical error in its software that allowed malicious code to remotely wipe its Galaxy S3 smartphone.

The vulnerability was showcased by security researcher Ravi Borgaonkar at Ekoparty security conference on Tuesday.

Samsung later told V3 that it was aware of the issue and had built a fix, which it was distributing as an over-the-air update..

"We would like to assure our customers that the recent security issue concerning the Galaxy S3 has already been resolved through a software update," a Samsung spokesman told V3.

"We recommend all Galaxy S3 customers to download the latest software update, which can be done quickly and easily via the over-the-air (OTA) service."

The vulnerability was reportedly in the device's Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) protocol, which is used in the messaging between handset and mobile network. Potentially, hackers could use the vulnerability to send a “factory reset” command to the user's device.

The attacks could be mounted using a number of different mediums including website links, NFC tags and QR codes.

Security firm Sophos has since warned that the vulnerability may relate to several other Android handsets, including those made by other manufacturers, and urged owners of devices to back-up their phone regularly.

"Whether you choose to trust the cloud, or synchronise to your laptop, or just copy important files to removable storage, don't take the long-term data integrity of your phone for granted," warned Sophos researcher Paul Ducklin.

Source : v3.co.uk

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