Samsung Galaxy S4

At 11pm last night through a very weird and cringe worthy presentation Samsung announced the details of their new flagship handset - the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Samsung have introduced a range of new features to the 5-inch smartphone, most notably a massively upgraded camera. The handset will feature a 13 mega pixel rear camera and a 2 mega pixel front-facing camera while the camera software gets a major upgrade with some brilliant new features.Dual recording, where both the front and rear cameras are used at the same time so that the person taking the picture can also be in the picture and the same when video calling or recording video looks like a particularly useful new feature.

The screen also gets an upgrade and is now a full 5-inches on the diagonal as well as being Full HD AMOLED with 441 PPI (Pixels Per Inch). The S4 will feature 2GB RAM along with 16GB storage - 32 and 64GB version will also be available.

To power all of this new tech Samsung have stuck in a 2,600 mAh battery although they haven't said how long it will stay charged.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LHv1FPd1Ec&w=560&h=315]

Hands free seems to be the way Samsung have gone with this new phone. They've introduced air gesture, smart pause and smart scroll. Air gesture allows the user to control certain aspects of the S4 without touching the screen but rather waving above it while smart pause stops video on the screen when the user looks away. Smart scroll - a much rumoured function - isn't exactly what people thought. The user can tilt their phone up or down to scroll rather than using their fingers. Although I can see a few problems with this already.

Despite all this new technology Samsung have managed to make the Galaxy S4 much thinner and lighter than the previous version and it now comes in at just 7.9mm thick (almost as thin as the iPhone 5) and weighs just 130 grams (slightly lighter than the S3).

The handset will be released at the end of April in 155 countries, on both 4G LTE and 3G networks.

There's a few things that weren't revealed though. The price is yet to be confirmed, there was no mention of the processor and no mention of battery life - something that will definitely be on people's minds.

Interestingly Samsung made absolutely no mention of Android or Google with much of the OS and built in apps being Samsung branded - something that smartphone companies have been trying to do for a while.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S4 stands to be a best selling handset and will most definitely be the most successful Android based handset. There's nothing revolutionary in there, it's more of an upgrade of the S3 rather than a new handset but still a great phone.

4G Bid Results

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator has today announced the winners of the 4G auction that's been taking place over the last couple of months. There were five winners of the auction; Everything Everywhere (EE), Hutchinson 3G UK Ltd (Three), Niche Spectrum Ventures Ltd (BT), Telefonica UK (O2) and Vodafone.

Between the five bidders £2.3 billion was raised with Vodafone paying for the most bands at a cost of £790 million. This is only 2/3 of the £3.5 billion that the UK government was hoping to get from the bidding process. Everything Everywhere (EE) has struggled to attract users to their existing 4G services which they released a few months ago and the UK government are already makes plans for 5G services to come online in less than ten years time. Is this why the bids are so low?

The bidding breakdown is as follows:

Telefonica (O2) who have won the bid for some of the 800 MHz spectrum are obliged to provide coverage to 98% of the UK population by 2017.

Mobile companies are expected to release their services within the next six months which should create quite a bit of competition on both price and data allowances.

Are you planning on switching to 4G? Are you already on 4G? What do you think? Leave your comments below.

Twitter creates Vine

Twitter have released a new iPhone and Android app called Vine. The app allows users to record 6 seconds of video, not all at once, and upload it to the service and to their Twitter accounts. It's been a hit so far with some quite videos being posted.

Apple release a 128GB iPad

A 128GB version of the ever popular iPad has now gone on sale for £639. It is aimed more at the enterprise market rather than consumers. Does this signal the end of the tiny 16GB version of the iPad and maybe iPhone?

Blackberry Launch BB10

At a press launch streamed at locations around the world Blackberry (formally RIM, that's another story) released their new smartphone device, the Blackberry 10. It's offered in two forms; a touchscreen version and a traditional version with a qwerty keyboard.

The touchscreen version, called the Z10, features a 4.2" screen. The device itself looks good and looks to be of good quality.

The big 'wow' though is the OS - It looks brilliant. Something called Blackberry 'Flow' allows users to access the 'hub' where all social network and BBM notifications are without ever leaving the app their in. It look slick.

Blackberry Messenger (BBM) has also got a massive boost. It now offers video calling and voice calling, both free over Wi-Fi and a new screen sharing option that looks fantastic.

The UK will be the first country to get the Z10 as it launches tomorrow (31st January) on a number of carriers.

More details soon as more is released.