Apple smart watch efforts confirmed by US patent

Fresh evidence that Apple has been working on a smart watch concept since at least 2011 has emerged in a patent filing.

The document describes a flexible touchscreen display which would communicate with a smartphone or other electronic device.

It coincides with a report from a tech consultancy suggesting there is huge pent up demand for such a gadget.

But ABI Research warns that battery life issues still need to be addressed.

It says assuming such problems can be resolved, about 485 million wearable computing devices might ship by 2018, providing a significant growth opportunity for Apple and the wider consumer electronics industry.

Not all published patents lead to actual products, but Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have all published reports this month saying sources had confirmed Apple was experimenting with a watch-like device.

The iPhone-maker declined to comment when contacted by the BBC.

Slap wraps

The US Patent Office only revealed Apple's filing on Thursday, but the document dates back to August 2011.

The mooted device is likened to a "slap wrap" - a thin strip of metal covered in fabric which snapped around the user's wrist to form a bracelet.

The toy was popular with teenagers in the late-1980s, but fell out of favour after complaints that it lost its ability to retain its shape over time,. There were also complaints that some users had experienced injuries after the fabric wore away to reveal a sharp metal edge.Apple puts a hi-tech spin on the idea proposing a "slap bracelet" featuring a flexible circuit board and display, a touch sensitive user interface and a two-way communication chip, which would curl around the user's skin.

It suggests the gadget could detect which part of its surface was covered so that its readout would be limited to the exposed screen, with information flowing over the join.

Apple suggests lights along the device's edge could be programmed to blink when the user receives an alert, before displaying the details on its screen.

It says the user could then provide a brief response or use the bracelet to command a wirelessly connected smartphone, tablet or laptop to carry out another function such as adjusting the order of a song playlist or reviewing what recent calls had been made.

Apple acknowledges that the relatively thin nature of a wrist band would limit its uses, but suggests a wider armband could also be developed.

"At the width of a few inches the display can function to temporarily view and manipulate the screen of the portable device it is in communication with," says the paper.

"This might be desirable when the portable electronic device is stored in an inconvenient location such as a cargo pocket, or the bottom of a backpack."A larger display is also more desirable for map viewing... as a traveller or explorer can easily reference the information with a flick of the wrist while exploring."

Recharge worries

ABI Research notes that several companies already sell smart watches - such as Fossil, Pebble and Sony - while others (including Samsung and Martian) are known to be working on such products,

For the time being, however, it says the sector is dominated instead by activity trackers - such as Nike's Fuelband and the Garmin Forerunner - which account for an estimated 61% of the wearable tech market.

Some of these devices do tell the time, but they only offer limited functionality beyond monitoring exercise or the owner's sleep pattern.

The consultants instead suggest a much wider range of uses giving the example of linking the watch to a home automation system so that "a quick shake of your wrist can turn off/on room lights".

The idea of a smartwatch has been around for years - but the firm says technology only recently caught up with our imagination.

"Moore's law has driven silicon to the point where it's small enough and powerful enough to drive applications that mean things to consumers," ABI's chief research officer, Stuart Carlaw, told the BBC."Bluetooth Smart has also brought us high-bandwidth, low-energy connectivity at a less than a dollar a chip and takes up little space while offering robust performance.

"But one note of caution is that when we look at wearable technologies the use of power becomes an issue. You don't want to have to be plugging in four or five products a night to recharge - energy harvesting or wireless recharging technologies are going to become incredibly important."

Apple's patent confirms the company is aware of the problem.

It suggests harvesting energy from the movement of the user's arms and only coming out of standby mode when a sensor detects the device has been rotated to face a certain way.

It adds that the use of an AMOLED (active matrix light emitting diode) display would also help since it can allow individual pixels to be turned off, allowing the watch to only activate the parts which are facing the owner's eyes.

PlayStation 4: Expert views on Sony's games console reveal

Sony has been coy about the details, but it's all but certain the firm is about to unveil its next-generation console - the PlayStation 4.

The machine is expected to offer better graphics, a new controller and should fit in with the firm's wider efforts to promote 4K - or "ultra-high definition" - television technology.

Gamers will also be hungry for any news of launch titles.

These can prove critical to a console's early fortunes as Nintendo has discovered. The company recently reported sales of its rival Wii U were "losing momentum" a mere two months after launch acknowledging it needed to "enrich the software line-up".

Based on console sales Nintendo was the clear winner in the last round of the video game wars.

By the end of 2012, 100.2 million Wiis had been sold compared to 79.2 million Xbox 360s and 75.2 million PlayStation 3s, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

But in many "hardcore" gamers minds the key battle is between Sony and Microsoft.

At launch the PS3 appeared to trump the Xbox 360 thanks to having a more powerful CPU (central processing unit).As things turned out it ultimately proved hard to pick one machine over the other when it came to cross-platform titles. Even so, expect thousands of web pages to be dedicated to comparing the PS4 and next-generation Xbox's specs before they go on sale.

Cost will also be scrutinised - the PS3's $500/$600 (£325/£390) initial price tag was blamed for limiting its appeal. It is traditional to sell new console gaming hardware at a loss to begin with - the question is how low Sony is willing to go to secure market share.

One reason it may wish to be aggressive is that the PS4 is much more than a gaming system. It also represents a chance to become a gateway to other kinds of internet-based entertainment.

Microsoft has been more successful at securing video-on-demand deals - and linked subscription fees, but this battle is still in its early stages.

Ahead of the launch the BBC asked a range of experts for their views of the challenges and opportunities facing Sony and the wider console sector .

Fasol Gerhard, Eurotechnology Japan

Sony is often taken as a poster child for Japan's stagnation.

Over the last 15 years, the firm has shown essentially no revenue growth and its profits have been wiped out by its losses.

One must be careful not to overstate gaming's ability to turn that around. Its Computer Entertainment division accounts for 11% of Sony's sales, while 56% of the firm's profits - disregarding the parts that make losses - come from selling life insurance, consumer loans and financial products in Japan.

But the new consoles could drive additional earnings by helping sell the firm's movies, music and other media.

But there are challenges facing the launch.

In Japan, the smartphone-based social games market is huge with users spending a small fortune on virtual items and other premium content. In anticipation of their global success, the country's two biggest social gaming firms - Gree and DeNA - now have a combined market cap value that is half that of Sony' whole business.Across the world Sony is also facing disruption from free and $0.99 "snack-type" games. To win in this sector Sony would have to beat Rovio's Angry Birds brand, Halfbrick's Fruit Ninja and others.

If I was chief executive of Sony, I would also worry about the fact there are currently 800 games on PlayStation, while there are about 130,000 games on Apple's iOS platform.

The prospect of the US firm taking this enormous developer support to a next generation Apple TV ecosystem would give me sleepless nights.

Personally, I like Sony's acquisition of the cloud game platform Gaikai - a gaming service which offloads the processing work to remote servers which monitor controller commands and stream graphics to users via the internet.

The Wall Street Journal has suggested it might be used to provide access to last-generation PlayStation 3 games, and other uses are possible.

Ultimately Gaikai might become Sony's most important game platform.

David Braben, Frontier Developments

We see the arrival of new consoles like the new PlayStation as a great opportunity - the console is a key showcase for game technology.

At Frontier we have our own game engine and tools used for all of our games, and we pride ourselves at getting the most out of each machine.

When a film company sets out to make a feature film, they imagine the viewer watching in glorious surround sound in a cinema. Clearly the people creating it want it to be watched in the best possible setting that shows off all their creative work, and the same applies to a game.

Graphics and audio are moving ever closer to Hollywood-quality visual effects, and we will take full advantage of those capabilities, but it also goes beyond that.

As network connectivity gets ever better, control and input capabilities get ever more sophisticated, then so do the opportunities for our games like to shine and transform the players' experience and immersion. For example, our 2014 game Elite: Dangerous is an unashamedly high-end PC and Mac game, but I have every expectation it will come to new consoles, too.People have regularly talked about consoles being "killed" by mobile devices. In practice, these are all just different venues for our games, and with careful thought can be integrated into the same game.

It is great to see the next generation of consoles being announced, as mobile devices have become ever closer in performance to the six or so year old current console designs and the new wave of machines will once again push consoles out in front.

Keza MacDonald, IGN.com

The PlayStation 4 will be launching into a very different world than Sony's previous consoles.

When the PlayStation 3 came out in 2006 - early 2007 in the UK - the iPhone and iPad did not exist, smartphones were nascent, and only a very few people owned HD televisions.

The PlayStation 4, meanwhile, is competing with many other expensive gadgets for consumer cash, most of which are also capable of playing games.

What Sony has to show is that the games you'll be able to play on the PS4 are in a totally different class to what's already available.

The actual hardware is less and less relevant for a video games console now - if all people wanted was better graphics, they would all buy high-end PCs.

The PS3 and Xbox 360 have both been key players in the "battle for the living room" that has raged over the past five years, but with Apple, PC-specialists Valve and smart TV manufacturers stepping onto this battleground, things are getting crowded.In order to remain relevant, the new generation of games consoles will have to offer more than just a box that plays discs: they will have to offer viable platforms for digital distribution of games and entertainment, and of course huge libraries of content.

What it really comes down to is the games themselves.

In order to build confidence in the PS4, Sony will need to announce at least three strong, exclusive games titles, ideally both entirely new games or new entries in the company's existing well-loved franchises like Uncharted and Gran Turismo.

This is what will really matter to gamers.

Prof Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of TechnologyThanks to the enormous cost of developing blockbusters, AAA [big budget] games often settle on proven approaches.

The PS3 deepened Sony's commitment to visual realism, and new versions of popular game engines like Unreal extended that commitment.

This is a conservatism of technology as much as design. Given particular hardware and software tools, it's easier, cheaper, and less risky to make the games those consoles and engines were designed to run.

The PS4 has opportunity and reason to offer something different.

Until now, high-end consoles have focused on the physical world via 3D-graphics and physics.

Given a realistic world like those of Uncharted or Far Cry, what else can be done within them besides more variations on action or science fiction exploration and combat?

Consider all the things other than visuals, movement, and collision detection that might deepen the experience of games.

There's a lot visually realistic worlds leave out.To name a few: the biology of organic life-forms; the mental motivations of individuals; their group social, cultural, and economic dynamics; their political behaviours under different kinds of regimes; the logics of narrative progression and plot.

These are difficult but not intractable computational problems.

Research on procedural methods for narrative, behaviour, and motivation exist, they just haven't had the time and investment to develop into stable commercial systems.

Normally such work would be done in software anyway. But over time, proven software methods sometimes find their way back into hardware.

Sometimes it's better that way, because those methods become encapsulated and treated as givens.

The new, even more powerful multicore AMD64 architecture rumoured to run the PS4 might seem to allow game creators to do anything they want, but sometimes being able to do anything amounts to less freedom than being given specific tools.

Instead, the PS4 seems poised to offer a touchpad on the controller, in a foolish bid to compete with touch-controlled platforms like phones and tablets, rather than to offer new computational capacities that can't be found anywhere else.

Brian Fargo, InXile EntertainmentSony 

recognised early on the power of connecting their users to each other to make the gaming experience more meaningful.

Nothing beats the personal nature of joining your friends in a game either co-operatively or competitively. And this functionality does not come without a lot of effort and planning.

There are a number of systems and tools that need to be created in order to trigger people to jump in with their friends.

The basics start with the simplistic leader boards to stoke the vanity and competitive aspects of gaming. From there you need to make it simple to find your friends and be alerted when they come online.

Throw in the ability to chat online and you suddenly have your community of real life friends around you at all times.

I would expect Sony to greatly expand upon these systems to bring social connectivity to another level. A greater ability to jump in and out of multiplayer games would turn up the social aspects.Having alerts or information come to you while away from your gaming console would keep the players involved even while they are not playing. Players will want to access information on their favourite games and friends from any device they are operating.

In addition, we have also seen the power of the crowd as is relates to content creation and this is another area that could be area to be exploited.

It used to be that the console wars were won by who had the most powerful hardware but now it comes down to all of the systems that support a connected and greater experience.

Lewis Ward, IDCIt's clear that the device formerly known as the game console is quickly converging with a range of multimedia-capable devices that can be used in the living room.

Many smart TV's can now access over-the-top services, including casual games. The set-top boxes from cable and fibre companies are becoming web access points to an extent.

And then there are emerging gaming-centric technology providers like Valve's so-called Steam Box and the Android-based Ouya and GameStick consoles that have their sights set on the family room, in addition to tablet-makers like Apple and Samsung.

A successful gaming platform has four elements in my mind:

Quality hardware

A large catalogue of fun and innovative games

A surrounding ecosystem of software and value-added features that support community interactions

A unique business model and price point niche

If any of these elements are missing it's going to be difficult to make headway against the PS4 or the ecosystems that Nintendo and Microsoft have established.Going back through the emerging alternatives to the likes of the PS4, smart TV's come up the shortest on the game catalogue today. Their main challenge will be to get enough games to get people to switch their spending patterns away from game/entertainment consoles.

Cable and fibre company set-top boxes are currently short on games as well as social networking capabilities.

Right now, there are too many unknowns about Ouya and GameStick to make a call about their competitiveness. I'm sure they'll be low-priced from both a hardware and a game perspective relative to the PS4, but what's the catalogue look like and what about their social features?

The most intriguing near-term alternative to my mind is the Steam Box.

Valve already has an amazingly loyal hardware customer base - a base that's proven willing to open up their wallets - so I wouldn't put it past them to launch a successful connected gaming-centric platform in the living room.

More than any of the other current threats to the hegemony of the console manufacturers, at least in North America and the UK, I think Valve has the potential to peel off a significant market share in the next 3 years.Keza MacDonald, IGN.com

Apple loses Brazilian iPhone trademark ruling

Brazilian regulators have ruled that Apple does not have exclusive rights to use the "iPhone" trademark in the country.

But the US tech giant has already lodged an appeal against the decision with the Brazilian regulators.

The ruling is the result of a local company, Gradiente Eletronica, registering the name in 2000, six years before the US firm.

Apple can continue to sell iPhone-branded handsets in Brazil.

But the decision means that Gradiente has an option of suing for exclusivity in South America's biggest market.

The Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) told the BBC that its decision only applied to handsets, and that the California-based company continued to have exclusive rights to use the iPhone name elsewhere including on clothing, in software and across publications.

"I can confirm that INPI published today its decisions about eight trademark applications related to iPhone, from Apple: four applications were rejected and other four were approved," said the agency's spokesman Marcelo Chimento.

"Some were rejected because a Brazilian company, Gradiente, made an application for G Gradiente iphone in 2000 and it was approved in 2008. As Apple started its applications for iPhone in 2006, they were denied because Gradiente had a very similar register for cell phones applied some years before the American company.

"The trademarks approved today for Apple were related to other classes, such as education, software development and advertising. Since they are in other classes, different from communications and telephones, they could be approved."

Appeal

INPI added that Apple had argued that it should have been given full rights since Gradiente had not released a product using the iPhone name until December 2012.

Apple is asking the INPI to cancel Gradiente's registration through expiration - it is arguing that the Brazilian firm did not use the name within a five year limit.

The Manaus-headquartered company now sells its Android-powered iPhone Neo One for 599 reals ($304; £196).

Bloomberg previously reported that the chairman of Gradiente had said: "We're open to a dialogue for anything, anytime... we're not radicals."

Apple's most recent financial results revealed its cash reserves had grown to $137bn (£88bn).

The firm's manufacturing partner, Foxconn, currently produces iPhones and iPads among other equipment at its facilities in Brazil.

BlackBerry 10 faces uphill struggle

In the end, Carole Blake simply took a hammer to her BlackBerry smartphone, and smashed it into pieces. The London-based literary agent had had enough of what she saw as increasingly unreliable service.

In October 2011, BlackBerry servers were down for days including her time at the Frankfurt book fair. But that was just the beginning of her BlackBerry problems, as her handsets also started malfunctioning. "Four in a year left me frothing," she explained.

She switched to an iPhone 5. "It took five minutes to adjust, helped by having used an iPad. My unreliable BlackBerry was hurting business," she said.

For Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that invented the BlackBerry, Blake's story illustrates some of the many blows to the company over the past two years.

Millions of users, and hundreds of businesses, have deserted BlackBerry for Apple, or Android phones such as Samsung's Galaxy S III, or Nokia. RIM suffered huge global operating losses last year including $643m in a single quarter and the board ejected its two co-founders, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, replacing them with operations chief Thorsten Heins.

So Wednesday is a very big day for BlackBerry, when Heins will unveil the company's latest offerings to try to reverse the tide and tempt back Blake and millions like her in what some analysts see as a last chance to survive.

Two new mobiles – one with a keyboard, and one with only a touchscreen – will showcase its new BB10 software, which brings a completely new interface to the phone once known as the "CrackBerry" because of its ability to serve round-the-clock email to workaholics.

Heins realises that he has a huge challenge but he recently told Die Welt that he believed RIM's role in the future will be substantial and that the new software is aimed not only at phones but also for cars. "We have taken the time to build a platform that is future-proof for the next 10 years," he said.

Benedict Evans, of Enders Analysis, sees BB10 as a last roll of the dice: "The question is, how long can they keep rolling it? How long can they wait for the right numbers? The high-end corporate users are abandoning it." Evans added that from talking to people in phone shops, it seemed teenagers were keen on rivals with more games apps.

Carolina Milanesi, smartphones analyst at research group Gartner, said the company cannot carry on as before. "This is certainly key to RIM's survival and indeed BBM is just not enough anymore," she said."Even consumers that are price sensitive and who value messaging are looking for more than BlackBerry Messenger." BBM – the free messaging service that was blamed for helping rioters organise during the UK riots in summer 2011 – no longer ties people to the brand either. The rise of rival services such as WhatsApp, which has an estimated 100m users worldwide – compared to BBM's 79m. WhatsApp also lets users send text-style messages for free but works on any smartphone.

All of that means Heins and RIM have a mountain to climb. They have to tempt back people such as Mamun Ahmed, who switched from a BlackBerry to a phone using Google's Android software: "Being a BlackBerry user I started realising that, I couldn't keep up with the 'tried the cool app' trend, as very few app makers were making apps for BlackBerry," he said.

His bank only offered apps for the iPhone and for Android phones. He said: "All of the websites I was using on a day-to-day basis seemed only interested to make apps for the iPhone and Android and totally ignored others."

That has meant a flight of users – so pronounced in the US that in October the New York Times ran a story about people being embarrassed to show their BlackBerry in public. Heins wrote to the paper saying the article "lacks the balance" expected, saying "there are millions of BlackBerry fans out there who not only find value in their device, but also pride in being a BlackBerry owner."

Some remain loyal. Abigail Rudd, a student at Exeter University, stuck with her BlackBerry rather than buying an iPhone when she renewed her contract last April because it is more robust than other models. "In addition, the keyboard is great," she said.

Yet the outflow continues. ComScore, which calculates US smartphone ownership, reckons that there are now just 9 million BlackBerry users in the US, down from a peak of nearly 22 million in September 2010, while US smartphone ownership has doubled to 123 million.

Embarrassment can be a factor. Jamie Fox, in charge of communications for the TeamGB Ski and Snowboard teams, finally switched after 10 years with BlackBerry to an iPhone 5 this month. "I was just on a ski trip with [2012 long jump Olympic gold medallist] Greg Rutherford and [Olympic runner] Andrew Strong and was relentlessly ribbed about still having a BlackBerry. Whenever it was taken out in the bar, loud cheers would go up and the mocking would begin," he said.

But he had also become dissatisfied with the battery life, app choice and camera quality of the BlackBerry.

RIM has also lost its favoured position as the handset of choice with business people. It has lost corporate and government contracts, some in the wake of the service outage. Businesses which used to hand out BlackBerrys are often replacing them with iPhones, where the galaxy of apps (sometimes custom-made) and better web browsing are pushing the BlackBerry aside. The prestigious contracts that RIM has lost in the past two years include the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the US National Transportation and Safety Board and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. In November, even the Pentagon sought to let in Apple and Android phones, even while stressing that it would still hold on to some BlackBerry phones.


The key to a BlackBerry revival, suggests Francisco Jeronimo, smartphone analyst at IDC, will be whether it can persuade those corporate customers – the segment where it first grew to fame as Wall Street financiers discovered they could get secure email while out of the office – to stay with it. "They could survive. You won't compare them to Apple and Samsung but they could be in the top five handset makers. If they can manage to regain trust from the companies who have been clients, they can survive, profitably, just by staying small and focused," he said.

And if they don't persuade those companies? "If they can't, it will be very hard," he said. At worst, RIM might be broken up for the value of its patents which are considerable.

Fox, for one, found his BlackBerry a source of irritation. "The big annoyance was the random red light flashing [on the top of the phone]. It wouldn't be for an email, but for some random BlackBerry update. And I could never get it to stop. So distracting. On the whole, it's just outdated," he said.

Persuading people that it is not is the task that lies ahead of Heins. Most of all, he wants to stop that red light going out.

Apple no longer most valuable company

Apple

Apple no longer most valuable company

The tortoise passed the hare Friday when Apple (AAPL) fell from its lofty perch as the world's most valuable company, returning Exxon Mobil to the top.

Fears over slowing growth for Cupertino-based Apple prompted investors to jettison the tech giant's shares, which nose-dived 2.4 percent Friday and ended at $439.88. Texas-based Exxon rose 0.4 percent to close at $91.73.

Despite the end of Apple's 12-month reign as the world's No.1 company, some Bay Area investment experts analysts believe sentiment toward Apple has turned too gloomy -- just as the excitement about Apple over the previous months was too euphoric.

"Apple has great prospects for the future, but I do believe the optimism about Apple was overdone," said Michael Yoshikami, founder of Walnut Creek-based Destination Wealth Management. "It rallied more than it should have, a rally based on the hysteria over the company."

Christopher Giordano, principal owner of Los Gatos-based Giordano Wealth Management Group, said that Apple, despite its fall, "is still a terrific company with a great balance sheet, a great product line, tremendous innovation, and that could make this a good entry point to own Apple."  

Apple most recently passed Exxon in market value in late January 2012, after the energy giant had been on
top of the heap for a considerable time.

"We love energy stocks as a sector and have those in our portfolio," Giordano said. "An incredible energy renaissance is going on in this country. This is just a beginning of an upswing in energy in the United States."

Apple stock has slumped 17 percent so far this year. That was the worst decline of any company in the broad-based S&P 500 Index.

The selling of Apple's shares Friday lowered its market capitalization to $413 billion, trailing Exxon's $418 billion. The 2.4 percent decline of Apple stock followed a 12 percent plunge Thursday after a mixed earnings report Wednesday. That was the worst one-day decline for Apple since 2008.

"Apple was getting a bit ahead of itself," said Eric Heckman, principal executive with San Jose-based Heckman Financial. "The current price is a more realistic number."

Apple Drops Chinese Supplier For Using Underage Labor

Apple has stopped doing business with a Chinese manufacturer after a report said it had employed 74 underage workers. According to Apple's Supplier Responsibility Report, which was released by the company Thursday, Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics was employing workers under the age of 16.

"Our auditors were dismayed to discover 74 cases of workers under age 16 — a core violation of our Code of Conduct. As a result, we terminated our business relationship with PZ," the company says in the report.

Apple has now lost its spot as the most valuable publicly traded company, one year after it first firmly overtook ExxonMobil. Even though it announced a record number of iPhone and iPad sales in its last quarter earnings, its stock price has fallen over 12 percent.

Apple says it is working hard to improve labor conditions at the factories of its Chinese contractors. It said it also discovered that one of the region's labor agencies had conspired with the manufacturer, providing children to them and helping forge age-verification documents. Apple said in its report that it alerted the provincial government, which fined the agency and suspended its business license."The children were returned to their families, and PZ was required to pay expenses to facilitate their successful return," Apple says in the report.In an interview with Bloomberg, Apple's Senior Vice President of Operations, Jeff Williams, said child labor was being used more than companies care to admit. "Most companies, they either don't report on it at all, or they say they look for it and found none, or they obscure the data in some way," Williams told Bloomberg. "If they're not finding it, they're not looking hard enough."

ABC News' Bill Weir visited the factory of Apple's Foxconn supplier last year and did not see any underage workers. "But while we looked hard for the kind of underage and maimed workers we've read so much about, we mostly found people who face their days through soul-crushing boredom and deep fatigue," Weir wrote about his visit.

In the 37-page Supplier Responsibility Progress Report, which can be viewed here, Apple said there had been a 72 percent increase in facility audits. According to the report, Apple achieved an average of 92 percent compliance with the goal, for now, of a maximum 60-hour work week.

Apple vowed last year to improve working conditions at its manufacturing facilities in China, vowing to work specifically on reducing working hours for Chinese workers. In March 2012, the Fair Labor Association released a report on the poor conditions at Apple's Foxconn supplier. The organization gave a long list of recommendations to Apple and Foxconn, and both Apple and Foxconn agreed to follow them.

In August, the FLA said that that Foxconn had completed 280 action items on time or ahead of schedule. By July 1, 2013, Foxconn has promised to reduce workers' hours to 49 hours per week and stabilize pay -- though the limit is rarely enforced because workers often want to work overtime and make ends meet.

Apple announced in December that it would begin to make some of its Mac computers in America in 2013.

Sony unveils "thinnest" tablet

Sony Xperia Z Tablet

Sony has unveiled what it says is the thinnest tablet computer of its kind. The Android-powered Xperia Z is 0.27in (6.9mm)-thick. That is 0.01in thinner than Apple's iPad Mini despite featuring a bigger 10.1in screen.

It coincides with news that LG is releasing a 5in handset - the Optimus G Pro - making it the latest to offer the so-called "phablet" form factor.

Both devices have only been confirmed for release in Japan, but more details are expected next month.

Mobile World Congress is being held in Barcelona from 25 to 28 February and is a popular time to announce global launches of new smart devices. Samsung has already said it would show off a new 8in version of its Galaxy Note tablet family at the event.
 

Sony Xperia Z Tablet is water-resistant

Beyond being thin, Sony's new tablet can also lay claim to being the lightest for its size. The firm says it weighs 1.1lb (495g) - a fraction below the Toshiba Excite 10 LE which previously laid claim to the title.

In addition it is water and dust-resistant - featuring similar plastic covers to protect its ports as are found on the firm's Xperia Z smartphone which was announced a fortnight ago at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The two Sony devices are designed to work together, allowing photos and other data to be transferred between the phone and tablet using the firm's "one-touch sharing" facility which is activated by waving the machines close to each other to activate their near field communications (NFC) chips.

"It's a good product and on the face of it it should do well, but it is hampered by a potential squeeze on the larger tablet segment as a lot of consumers and other manufacturers are moving to the smaller 7in-to-8in form factor - in part because of their cheaper price," David McQueen, principal analyst at the Informa Telecoms and Media consultancy, told the BBC.

"So the success of the Sony tablet might ultimately be determined by how much it costs as well as whether the firm bundles some of the content it owns from its music, movie and gaming divisions."
Packed pixels

LG Optimus G phone

LG Optimus G phone

LG's new handset is effectively a version of its existing Optimus G phone with a bigger, more detailed screen.

It offers 440 pixels per inch (ppi) - matching HTC's newly-released J Butterfly and Huawei's Ascend D2.

This density of its pixels allows LG's handset to be marketed as offering playback of 1080p videos in their full high definition resolution.

However, the trade-off is the screen is power-hungry. LG's handset features a 3,000 mAh (milliampere-hour) battery as a consequence which is bigger than that of most other smartphones.

"4G high-speed data connections are helping push the adoption of higher definition bigger screens on phones," said Mr McQueen, "but I do think it will remain a small, though high-end, segment of the market."

NEC Casio have Two screens

NEC Casio with two screens

 

Sony and LG's devices were revealed as part of Japanese network NTT Docomo's Spring line-up announcement.

It also featured a more unusual handset from NEC Casio featuring two screens.

The Medias W N-05E's displays are placed on either side of the device, but can also be folded out so that the two 4.3in LCD screens sit alongside each other.

It is the second dual-screened smartphone to be announced in recent weeks - Russia's Yota unveiled a model in December which features one LCD screen and one e-ink display, which it said would go on sale in the second half of the year.

However, recent history suggests such devices might only appeal to a niche audience.

Samsung, LG and Kyocera are among others firms to have released dual-screened phones over the past two years which only achieved limited sales.

article source: BBC.co.u

O2 urges rivals to stop providing chargers with new phones

O2 has urged its industry peers to stop giving away chargers with new mobile phones, after a trial found the vast majority of customers were happy to buy handsets without chargers.

The telecom giant yesterday announced the results of a three-month pilot scheme, which saw it sell HTC One X+ handsets without the USB chargers they usually come with, but still with a detachable USB cable.

O2 had expected 70% of customers would be happy to take the greener option as most people already have a compatible charger at home. Anyone wanting an additional charger could buy one at cost price.

In fact, 82% of One X+ customers agreed to buy the handset on its own since the trial started in October, exceeding O2's expectations.

O2 believes there could be 100m unused chargers in people's homes and offices, enough to fill four Olympic-sized swimming pools if thrown away.

The company now estimates there would be 24m fewer charges sold in the UK each year if the results of its pilot were applied to the 30m new phones sold annually.

Ronan Dunne, chief executive of O2, urged other mobile retailers to follow its lead and pledge to phase out the automatic inclusion of chargers at the point of sale.

"The results of the trial demonstrate a clear willingness among consumers to consider and respond to the environmental argument for taking a phone charger-free," he said. "I now hope that as a result of this study the rest of the industry will now consider joining us in our campaign to take chargers out of the box for good."

Last year, O2 pledged to phase out mobile phone chargers for all new phones by 2015, as part of a broad new sustainability programme. At that time, Bill Eyres, O2 head of sustainability, predicted just 60 per cent of people would be prepared to buy a charger-free phone.

However, the results show people are receptive to the idea of reducing electronic waste, if they are given the right information.

"These trial results offer powerful evidence that customers are prepared to amend their purchasing decisions if they have more choice and more information," added Dunne.

"The lesson for the industry from this pilot is that consumers are very receptive to the message that they can benefit the environment by avoiding the needless purchase of chargers. I would now like to see others taking similar steps, working with us as we aim to ensure all our handsets are sold charger-free by 2015."

In 2009, leading mobile phone makers, including Samsung and Apple, signed an EU resolution to create a single universal charger, based on a micro USB connector by January 2012, in an effort to reduce unnecessary waste. 

However, Apple appears to have backtracked on the pledge, introducing its own new Lightning Charger for the iPhone5 last year.

Apple's Next iPhone Could Use New Touch Technology

According to a report in The China Times (Translated by computing.co.uk), sources in the Apple supply chain claim that, “Apple intends to switch to alternative touch technology for its next generation of mobile phones iPHONE 6, stating that a ‘Touch On Display’ panel is being developed by Taiwanese Apple supplier Innolux.”

In November, game developers at CMA Megacorp in London identified a glitch with rapid diagonal scrolling on the iPhone 5. They tweeted that if you “slide [your] finger back and forth diagonally on screen, input events drop out or stop altogether.” The video above demonstrates the glitch by testing this kind of action on two iPhone 4 units, one running iOS 5 and the other iOS 6 against two iPhone 5 units with the same two versions of iOS. In both of the iPhone 5s, the screen froze up after a bunch of touch events piled up, but not on the iPhone 4s.

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User comments I have read suggest that not all of the new iPhones are equally sensitive, and then only for users, like Fruit Ninja or Infinity Blade players, who routinely make this kind of diagonal swiping action on their phones.

Cult of Mac reported in September that the iPhone 5′s thin “in cell” combination of touch screen and LCD display in one, was ”causing ‘significant production constraints’ that mean Apple cannot produce the device fast enough.” It may be that quality control has been a significant issue.

According to the China Times report, the new Innolux “Touch On Display” panel will have “a thickness of only 0.5mm, [and] better sensitivity than previous iPhones with a ’10 point full featured multi-touch’ function.” This would suggest that the next iPhone will be a “5s” instead of a “6,” and that Apple will use this transitional model to work out some of the kinks with the iPhone 5. In general, these second models have been better bets than the splashy premieres, with higher user satisfaction ratings. Consumer Reports, for one, is not a big fan of the iPhone 5.