Galaxy S4 Active: not as waterproof as you'd expect

It didn’t take long for people to take Samsung seriously when they officially revealed their rugged Galaxy S4 Active last week at their London Premiere. During the presentation itself, the host “accidentally” dropped the device in a water tank to show just how waterproof it was.  However, it seems that when put to some practical real world tests, the S4 Active didn’t really perform as expected.

Caution: device might not like all this water. / © AndroidPIT

Initial reports were pretty good, giving the S4 Active a rating of IP67 for water and dust resistance, pretty high on the Ingress Protection (a scale that specifies the environmental protection of enclosures around electronic equipment).  Edward Baig from USA Today decided to see just how good the S4 Active was.
The device performed well, passing tests that included dunking it in a bowl of water, pouring water over it, shooting it with a water gun (y’know, for those impromptu smartphone water fights that break out all over the place), but the one obstacle for the S4 Active: a swimming pool.

Check out the video of Edward talking about the tests here.

As noted by Edward, after the dip in the pool, the display went black and only came back alive shortly after to indicate that it still had some juice in it left before it died again. He did note that after being dried out, the S4 Active did become active around a day later, but still exhibited funky behavior: a messed up touch-screen, device thinking it had headphones plugged in, and more.
There isn’t much to go from on the video other than Edward talking about the tests, so it’s uncertain whether he was following recommendations to ensure that the S4 Active is water resistant. How deep did he go in the pool? Was it submerged for longer than it should have been? Samsung does remind users to tightly seal the battery and USB covers before going for a plunge, and also noting that it’s water resistant to a depth of 1 meter for up to 30 minutes.  However, having “flaps” and covers that could easily be not set in properly by the user significantly increase the risk of the water and dust resistance failing all together.  While there might not be a practical solution that Samsung could have come up with, say by removing all ports and going to a fully inductive charging system and wireless file transfer, it’s still a downside that everyone should be aware of.

Maybe you should be checking all of the openings on the S4 Active before actively flinging it in water? / © samsungmobile.com

However, it seems like this isn’t an isolated incident as reports are showing up online of people with similar issues. Is this something that Samsung didn’t highlight clearly enough when marketing their new rugged member of the S4 family or a possible few bad apples in the production run?

HTC’s ‘comeback’ year not going to plan

The HTC One was popular on release, but a raft of senior departures and a former executive advising people to leave has cast yet another dark cloud over the firm, as Paul Withers explains

If any manufacturer needs a bit of luck, it’s HTC. It has had a torrid time of late. And just when things seem to be looking up, something immediately knocks it down again.

Take the HTC One. The build up to the launch was vast – ads all over the TV, press releases galore and a big launch event in central London – only to then be delayed, causing yet more miserable headlines. On release it received universal praise, being dubbed by some as the ‘best phone in the world’.

But then the black cloud and negative headlines returned, with the company’s poor Q1 financials seeing profits plunging by 91 per cent.

The firm’s CEO Peter Chou said at the time: “The worst for HTC has probably passed. 2013 will not be that bad.” He clearly had no idea what was coming.

It started well, HTC securing a partnership with Facebook for the HTC First ‘Facebook phone’ – something of a real coup you would suspect, right? Wrong.

The launch has been plagued by criticism and by association HTC has unfairly been caught in the middle. You need only google the words ‘HTC’ and ‘Facebook’ to understand.

And then a former HTC employee took to Twitter to encourage others to leave the firm. The tweet from former product strategy manager Eric Lin, who left the manufacturer in February to join Skype, read: “To all my friends still @HTC – just quit. Leave now. It’s tough to do, but you’ll be so much happier. I swear.” Ouch.

Now you can view this in one of two ways: either Lin was taking nothing more than a petulant swipe at his former employer or he was highlighting to the world just how poor a company HTC is to work for now.

We’re none the wiser. But given the number of departures from the firm of late – chief product officer Kouji Kodera, global retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, UK and Ireland regional director Phil Roberson, worldwide director of digital marketing John Starkweather and VP of global communications Jason Gordon – you can’t help but wonder if there is some internal unrest within the company.

LG not interested in competition with Apple and Samsung on price’

Manufacturer will let rivals battle it out on price as it reveals it has no plans to release a tablet this year

LG says it is happy to let Apple and Samsung battle it out in the “very high tier” for smartphone devices.

The comments came from LG UK head of mobile Andy Coughlin during the launch of the manufacturer’s new Optimus G smartphone (pictured) at Mobile World Congress.

Coughlin said LG is focused on releasing devices across all ends of the market, but will not launch devices in the same price bracket as, say, the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy S III.

He also told Mobile News LG has no plans get involved in the “distracting” tablet market this year. The firm’s last launch in this area at MWC was the LG Optimus Pad back in 2011.

Coughlin said a decision on price for the Optimus G is yet to be made, but he said it will be “nowhere near” as expensive as devices such as the Galaxy S III and iPhone 5.

No immediate decision on a UK launch for the Optimus G Pro phablet, unveiled at MWC, has been made. It will go on sale in Asia first.

Instead, Coughlin said LG’s UK focus is on its L series, with the low-end L32 (RRP £79.99) and L52 (£129.99) coming to the UK at the end of March. Mid-tier smartphones the L72 and L92, whose prices have not been announced, are coming to the UK in the summer.

“Our aim is to have the largest display at all price points,” Coughlin said.

“There is a need to be in the premium end. But the Optimus G will be nowhere near as expensive as Apple and Samsung. LG are not in the business of playing in the very high tier space.

“I can’t control what the others do, we are not in a fight with Apple and Samsung. We are not concerned with what they do.”

Google: 'We're not in cahoots' with NSA

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, on Wednesday pushed back against allegations that the search company is "in cahoots with the NSA" and has allowed the spy agency to tap into its servers for user data. [WATCH VIDEO]

"I’m not sure I can say this more clearly: We’re not in cahoots with the NSA and there’s is no government program that Google participates in that allows the kind of access that the media originally reported," Drummond said in response to a question asked during a live online chat hosted by U.K. newspaper The Guardian. 

"There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box," he added. 

A day earlier, Google filed a petition asking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for permission to publish the aggregate number of national security requests it receives for user data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), citing its First Amendment rights. 

In the complaint, Google said it wanted to publish the figures to help repair its reputation with users after "misleading reports" claimed that it let the National Security Agency (NSA) access its servers as part of an Internet surveillance program called PRISM. Google asked to publish the total number of FISA requests it receives, if any, and the number of users or accounts tied to those requests.

The move immediately grabbed social media users' attention, with some alleging that Google filed the petition as a strategic public relations move aimed at maintaining its consumers' trust. 

Drummond bluntly rejected that claim when a participant in the Q&A said the company's action is "just a face-saving exercise."

"No, it isn't," he answered.

During the roughly hourlong chat, Google's top attorney sought to win back consumers' confidence in the company's handling of user data, as well as convince people that Google has not given the government unfettered access to its user data and servers. 

"I’m really troubled if you’ve lost trust in us because of this idea that we’re collaborating in a broad surveillance program. We’re not, and that’s why we are pushing back so hard on these allegations," Drummond told one chat participant. "We hope that our actions, in pushing for more transparency and legal reform and in continuing to take steps to protect our users, will win you back."

However, Drummond was vague when answering some sensitive questions about whether Google has previously asked for permission to publish the number of FISA requests it receives and what explanation the company was given if the government denied such a request. In response, he pivoted back to Google's history of disclosing the number and certain types of government requests it receives for user information. 

"We’ve long pushed for total transparency so users can better understand the extent to which governments request their data, for any reason," he said. "Earlier this year we managed to get clearance to release numbers for National Security Letters, but we’re going to keep pushing for more. We were also the first company to publish a transparency report."

He also said Google pushes back against the government "where we can" and does all it can to protect user data. But he noted, "We don’t write the laws." 

"Maybe one positive outcome of all this will be to have a deeper debate on this and come up with laws that are more transparent to the public," he said. 

Media reports initially said that the NSA had been given direct access to the servers of nine U.S. Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo. Tech companies have fiercely denied those reports and participation in any surveillance program that gives the government direct access to its servers.

Drummond noted during the Internet chat that "many of those original sources corrected their articles after it became clear that the PRISM slides were not accurate."

In an attempt to soothe users' concerns after the revelations about the NSA programs, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and Yahoo have released figures on the number of government requests for user information they have received in recent months. 

Yet Google held back, arguing that publishing the total number of government requests a company receives for user data isn't enough and would be a "step back" for its users. In its Transparency Report, the search giant breaks down its figures, providing numbers for national security letters separately from criminal ones. It also breaks down requests it receives via search warrant and subpoena.

Instead, Google said the government should let companies publish the aggregate number of FISA court requests they receive separately from criminal requests.

In a separate online chat with The Guardian earlier this week, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed the secret NSA programs, said Google and Facebook "were misleading" when they publicly denied knowing about the Internet surveillance program.

"Their denials went through several revisions as it became more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies," Snowden said.

Mobile Games Not As Popular With Millennials, Compared With Other Smartphone Users

Dekko, a San Francisco-based startup that just closed extra funding to build a platform for augmented reality apps, just brought its first title to market with a racing game that has players drive virtual cars across tabletops.

OK, so augmented reality, which overlays virtual items or information over the real world through a phone or tablet’s viewfinder, hasn’t really come into its own yet. There have been plenty of companies like Layar, which built one of the very early augmented reality browsers for the iPhone, which have been around for a few years.

That’s partially because the user experience is still a bit unwieldy with people having to take their phones or iPads out and pan their built-in cameras around. But it’s possible that Google Glass could change all of this.

Dekko, which recently took an additional $1.3 million in funding, is betting that augmented reality’s moment could be around the corner. Other startups are making this bet as well; another companyDaqri just picked up $15 million in a Series A round for augmented reality as well.

“We wanted to solve many of the basic user problems with augmented reality. We had a compulsion to at least show something that’s real and fun,” said co-founder and CEO Matt Miesnieks. “We wanted to build an experience that is kind of magical.”

The game, which you can demo below, has players hold up their iPads over a table. On the screen, you can see cars racing across a virtual track. It can turn any kind of flat surface into racetrack that’s visible on the iPad. The app is also multiplayer, allowing between one and four people to race each other, do stunts and crash into each other’s cars. The multiplayer mode can show a single, real-time shared view.

Tabletop Speed Trailer from Dekko on Vimeo.

To me, it sounds like a proof of concept that demonstrates Dekko’s platform, which was built by the startup’s in-house team of computer vision experts. Eventually, they’ll bring their platform to wearables like Google Glass.

“One thing we know about Glass is that our tech will work on it,” Miesnieks said.

Dekko’s backers include Echo Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Venture 51, Blumberg Capital, Launch Capital, Thomvest, Eniac Ventures, and Zig Capital, as well as angels like Howard Lindzon, Erik Moore, Dan Conway, and Raymond Tonsing.

Droid Update -It’s A Game, Not A Phone

The speculation is over folks! The new thing hinted at by @droidlanding’s tweets appears to be an augmented reality game. Could the game lead players to further Droid revelations?

Check out the latest tweet and a video for Droid Combat below. It’s no revitalized Droid, but it’s something.