Samsung Nexus S to get ground-breaking curved screen?

The Samsung Nexus S, the new Gingerbread phone that Eric Schmidt was showing off the other day, might have a remarkable new display that Samsung has recently developed. We already expected the display to be a next-gen version of Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen tech, but now we’re hearing reports that the sceen doesn’t just look better than the Galaxy S’s – it’s also curved.

As we reported earlier, Samsung seems to have perfected screens that curve and bend. Although we’ve seen demos of foldable screens, the initial screens set for the Nexus S aren’t anything nearly as flash, and nor are they as outrageous as the screens in the pic below.

Instead, the Nexus S is concave on the front, which nicely demonstrates the power of the technology to other manufacturers in a very subtle way.

Bendable phones on the way?

This sounds like it could be the beginning of yet another revolution in the mobile phone market, with first curved and then bendable screens finally coming to market, with Samsung at the vanguard.

If this sounds too unrealistic, check out the video below to see these displays in action.

Clearly the Nexus S’s screen won’t be as bendy as this, but it gives you a taste of what’s just around the corner.

It also makes the Nexus S one of the most eagerly awaited phones of the year – and there’s been a fair few of them already! Don’t let us down, Samsung!

LG Optimus Star leaked – Dual-Core Tegra2 Android superphone on the way!

Heard any news about LG lately? No, and nor have we, apart from their new Windows Mobile Phone 7 devices, and the fact that they’re the latest mobile phone company to be running at a loss.

Fortunately, that’s all about to change, as LG are preparing a monster of an Android phone for 2011. And it looks very good indeed!

LG missed out on the Android bandwagon in 2010, focusing instead on Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7 and other, less-sexy operating systems. Compared to the iPhone and the new user interfaces from the likes of HTC, LG’s phones simply couldn’t compete.

Their only Android offering was the LG GW620 and the LG Optimus One, neither of which could challenge Samsung or HTC in terms of looks or features.

Despite this, the Optimus One showed LG a very important lesson: that Android is really really popular right now. The Optimus One was built down to a price, so was never meant to compete with the Galaxy S and the like, and yet it became LG’s fastest selling phone ever, shifting a whopping 1 million units on 40 days.

This clearly shows that the market wants Android right now, and they’re very happy to purchase an Android phone from LG – which is lucky, as LG are putting the finishing touches to a beast of an Android phone that will challenge Samsung and HTC for the title of King of the Android smartphones!

OK, enough waffling, what does this new LG Android phone offer?

LG’s new Android phone’s features

Prepare yourself first. Sit down, have a glass of water next to you, maybe a change of underwear. Now read this:

• Dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor
• 1080p video recording and playback
• 8 megapixel camera
• 1500mAH battery for extended battery life
• 4″ screen
• microSD and microUSB slots
• HDMI port
• video calling via front-facing camera

Wow! In other words, it’s right up there with the new Samsung Android phones of 2011, such as the Nexus S, but with NVIDIA’s Tegra2 chip powering it.

This is all mouth-watering stuff. LG have been very quiet in 2011, and have left the plaudits to go to Samsung, who took the Android bandwagon and rode it for all it was worth! It’s great to see even more competition coming to the market, and I can’t wait to see how HTC will respond.

Expect MWC in February next year to be very busy indeed!

The smartphones of 2011 revealed by Qualcomm

Remember the start of 2010 when everyone got all excited with the Nexus One and the HTC Desire? So powerful were those phones, with their Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon processor, that Google even started calling them Superphones.

But what about 2011? With phones already having the power of laptops from just a few years ago, what can we expect from next year’s superphones?

Qualcomm may have the answer. The maker of the Snapdragon has just revealed more details on its next generation of smartphone chips, which should give us an insight into the power of 2011′s smartphones. And it is, I promise you, mouth-watering!

The smartphones of 2011

The HTC Desire features a 1GHz Snapdragon chip. The Desire HD features a next-gen 1GHz Snapdragon chip that’s much faster than the original Desire’s. For 2011, though, those phones are stumbling dinosaurs.

2011 is all about dual core – two processors inside your phone, each working on it own task in parallel with the other, theoretically doubling the performance. The clock speed will grow as well, moving up from 1GHz to 1.2GHz and beyond. With the addition of other architectural tweaks, 2011′s Snapdragon, the MSM8960, will be five times faster than the original Desire HD.

Five times faster! Even more impressively, it’ll only consume 75% of the power that the Desire consumes, so you can do more, more quickly, with less battery.

Broadband smartphones even faster than your desktop

The good news doesn’t end there though. Qualcomm’s chips also offer built-in radios that connect with numerous different network technologies. For 2011, that means its Snapdragons will come with WLAN, GPS, Bluetooth, FM radio, 3G and 4G (LTE) all built in.

4G is the most impressive of this list, as it’s theoretically capable of some stunning speeds. With most mobile operators now rushing to upgrade their networks to be 4G compatible, the phones of 2011 should be able to download data at anywhere between 5 – 12Mbps (depending on how crowded the network is), and up to a theoretical 45MBps.

Smartphones with the power of the PS3

As a final bit of jaw-droppingness, Qualcomm also manufactures the Adreno GPU (graphics processor), which is also used in top-end smartphones. In 2007 – 2008, the Adreno 130 meant that phones such as the Nokia N-Gage had the same graphical performance ability of the Nintendo DS. By 2009, the Adreno 2xx chip had given phones such as the iPhone 3GS the same graphical performance as the Nintendo Wii.

Next year, the Adreno 3xx will have the same graphical performance as the XBox360 and PS3!

Imagine the quality of the games you’ll be able to play. Angry Pigs as a 3D HD First Person Shooter is surely only just around the corner!

Summary: the phone of 2011

Putting all that together, this is what the phone of 2011 will have:

• Dual-core processor running at around 1.3 – 1.5GHz
• 12 – 25Mbps 4G download speeds
• 5Mbps upload speeds
• WLAN b/g/n
• Bluetooth 3.0
• aGPS
• Graphics performance similar to a PS3

Wow!

Should you buy a phone now or wait until 2011?

Ah, the dilemma we all face! With phones this good just around the corner, should you wait, or buy a new phone now? It’s the dilemma I’m in, as I’ve just ordered an HTC Desire HD, and am now wondering whether to wait or not.

But here’s the thing – there’s always a Next Big Thing just around the corner. If you wait now, you’ll wait again in six months, when the next Next Big Thing is just around the next corner! It’s this logic that’s kept me with my trusty old T-Mobile G1, when I was going to buy first an HTC Desire and then a Samsung Galaxy S, but put both purchases off waiting for the Next Big Thing!

And although many phones will be released next year with dual cores, the specs you see above won’t realistically come out until the end of 2011.

So take it from me, don’t wait – buy a new phone now, and then buy an even better one in 18 short months’ time! The alternative is to put it off eternally, and end up with a really old battered looking phone that even its mother couldn’t love (OK, that’s not true, I still love my old G1!) – and that’s no good for anyone!

Revealed: Specs of Samsung’s 2011 Flagship Gingerbread phone

News of Samsung’s flagship phone for 2011 has surfaced, and you’ll be delighted to know it makes the Galaxy S look like an old Motorola StarTac! Not only does the feature-set read like a wishlist of every Android fanboy, it’s actually been confirmed as being the real deal.

This really will be the Galaxy S of 2011, and is set to be released around February next year.

This is brilliant news, but there is a but – I’ve just ordered an HTC Desire HD, and this new Samsung flagship kicks its butt already!! Grrr!

OK, on with the specs!

Samsung Gingerbread phone’s features

Are you sure you’re ready for this? You might need to sit down first! This is the list of features you can expect from Samsung next gen flagship phone:

• 4.5″ WVGA sAMOLED2 screen
• 14.4Mpbs downloads
• 5.76Mbps uploads
• 1.2GHz CPU
• 16GB memory
• 8 megapixel camera with LED flash
• WiFi b/g/n
• DNLA
• GPS
• Bluetooth 3.0
• Full 1080p HD video capture and playback
• Universal eBook reader
• Android Gingerbread
• Ultra sleek design

Phew! I’ve looked at this feature-set and tried to think of one thing that’s not the best-in-class, and the only thing I can come up with is the camera’s flash. Dual LED would have been better, Xenon absolutely perfect, but that’s such a minor thing that it’s really inconsequential.

It’s safe to say that Samsung have well and truly raised the bar with this beauty, which looks set to trounce every other phone on the market.

It’s super fast with a 1.2GHz processor and amazing download and upload speeds. Its screen is a second generation Super AMOLED (and the first generation Super AMOLED, as seen on the Galaxy S, is already the best in class). It’s got a cracking camera and full 1080p video capture. And with DLNA it can stream photos and movies around the house to and from your PC and TV.

And of course, let’s not forget Android Gingerbread on board. We’ve not seen Gingerbread in action yet, but we’re already excited, and seeing it running on a machine like this is simply mouth watering!

It’s rare that I get this excited about a new phone these days (part of the hazards of writing about them every day!), but Samsung really have created something special with this new flagship.

Can’t wait to see how it performs in real life!

Now, what should I do about my Desire HD? Ah, dilemmas, dilemmas!

Flexible iPhone on the cards thanks to new Samsung flexible AMOLED screen

Not content with producing the best screen display on the market in the form of its Super AMOLED display, Samsung has gone one better with new technology that could revolutionise the mobile in your pocket – the world’s first flexible AMOLED display that will actually reach production!

Flexible display technology has been with us for years, but it’s only ever been in prototype form. No-one has come near creating an affordable reliable version that can be successfully mass produced in the numbers needed by the mobile phone companies.

Until now, that is – Samsung seems finally to have cracked it!

When will we get flexible phones?

Previous bendable displays have been small black and white efforts, and any article featuring them has always ended with the words “it should go into full production in the next year or two.”

Well this article’s not that different – Samsung’s flexible display isn’t exactly ready right now. But it is very close to production. However, while the technology is genuinely exciting, colour me skeptical still about its actual release date! I wouldn’t be so skeptical if a virtually identical article hadn’t appeared on OLED-Display.net in May last year, when the technology Samsung had created was “… simpler and improves efficiencies necessary for mass production.”

This newer display is apparently “…a major step to mass produce Flexible Amoleds in the near future .”

I hate the words “near future”!

That aside, what Samsung’s done with the new technology is genuinely impressive. The 4.5″ flexible AMOLED display they’ve created has a WVGA resolution (800 x 480 pixels), low power consumption and minimal ghosting. So when this thing finally sees the light of day, it really will transform the mobile in your pocket.

A Flexible iPhone?

The first company to use this new tech (aside from Samsung, of course) could well be Apple. They’re already rumoured to be working with Samsung in order to use a Super AMOLED display for their iPhone 5, and Samsung have ramped up production of their existing (non-bendy) Super-AMOLED displays from 3 million units a month to 30 million a month to cope with the extra demand expected.

So with Apple working closely with Samsung, and Samsung so very close to mass producing a flexible screen, it’s only a matter of time before a flexible iPhone is released.

Personally, I don’t see it ready in time for the iPhone 5, but I’d put money on the iPhone 6 being bendier than Beckham!