Despite all the negative comments about its neither-a-phone-nor-tablet display size, the Galaxy Note is now among Samsung’s more successful products. According to official figures released in June, the company sold a cool 7 million units of the device seven months since its launch. Samsung later announced the technically improved Galaxy S III-based Galaxy Note II. Now, while the next Galaxy Note announcement is months away, the folks over at Concept Phones have come up with an interesting mockup called the Galaxy Note X. Check it out after the jump.
Fans of innovative products and mobile gaming will probably be familiar with the original iControlPad hardware that connected to mobile phones, allowing the user to control their favorite games without having to fiddle with on-screen controls. The initial bit of kit connected to smartphones through Bluetooth and brought an extra fun element to mobile based gaming, but things have been taking a little step further with the company's second iteration of the product that they are trying to get funding for via the Kickstarter platform.
Mobile devices are not just great for calling, SMSing, browsing the web, sending e-mails and increasing productivity, but are also more commonly being used as high-spec gaming machines. With even your average smartphone or tablet device packing in multiple cores, one can immerse oneself in console-standards of gaming, and year by year, we're seeing many of the big publishers embracing mobile.
Regardless of what side of the fence you happen to sit on when it comes down to the old and rather tiresome Android vs. iOS debate, the fact remains that each of the mobile operating systems has definite benefits over the other. The flip side is also true that each of the firmware comes with a definitive set of issues that can, on occasions, deter users from purchasing a device that runs them. One of the oldest myths that still seems to get airtime is that iOS is security tight, but we have seen that disproven on multiple occasions. However, even though Apple still has a little work to do with iOS, the latest reports suggest that Android users are definitely at risk.
One of the great things about the smartphone industry is its diversity and contains a number of different mobile operating systems as well as a plethora of devices being pushed to the market by a variety of different manufacturers. There is no definition of a one-size-fits-all device with each new handset offering its own set of features and abilities that appeal to different user sets. One of the frustrating things from a consumer perspective is appreciating 95% of what a device offers, but wanting to make the additional 5% up with options from a different device.
Battery retention is a massive issue with our electronic devices, and the smaller, thinner, and lighter they've become, the harder vendors have had to strive to keep the battery retention at optimum level. The companies behind our notebooks, smartphones and tablets tend to quote a battery life seldom reachable for the majority, and more often than not, the onus is on the consumer to take battery-conserving steps in avoiding that fateful warning popup or dreaded low battery logo in the corner.
The battle for supremacy in the cloud-based services has definitely stepped up a notch or two over the past few months, with a host of companies joining a territory manned mainly by Dropbox. Apple kicked things off by launching iCloud along with iOS 5 back in October of last year, and Microsoft finally brought SkyDrive to the mainstream in the early stages of 2012 - laying the foundations for the eventual release of its so-called "Cloud OS" - Windows 8.
Samsung is the number one smartphone manufacturer in the world right now, and having yielded huge success with the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, few could have foreseen the impact of the Galaxy Note, which although seeming to look far too large for most pockets, actually sold in impressive numbers.
Music and mobile devices invariably go hand in hand these days. I can't remember the last time I walked down the street or got on some public transport and didn't see an individual with an iOS or Android powered smartphone with their headsets on listening to music. The accelerated development of smartphones over the last decade or so has drastically changed the way we see our phones, and apart from making phone calls, they are our everyday media powerhouses.
Want to take all your music with you, and listen to it in a variety of different ways? Then Jukebox may be right up your street. Managing huge music libraries across multiple devices is nothing short of a nightmare, especially as our music collections continue to grow. You can always move, or copy files around manually, but the whole thing reeks of the 20th century, and a time when the internet wasn't quite as useful as it is today.
