With all of the going-ons in the mobile smartphone space in the last few weeks, the GooPhone I5 handset may have managed to slip through the shutters without any of us knowing a great deal about it. For those who may not know, the GooPhone I5 isn't a sticky, congealed mess as the name suggests, but is instead a blatant copy of the new iPhone's design that is being sold in the Chinese market. Fair play to the makers who have actually managed to build a functional device based on Apple's leaked designs and got it on sale before the fruit company themselves, but the rest of the story is borderline laughable.
If you've even the remotest insight into the mobile app and gaming sphere, you'll undoubtedly have stumbled across Angry Birds on a number of occasions. In fact, you wouldn't even have needed to pick up a smartphone or slab to have encountered the immensely-popular title, and the fact it can be played in Chrome, on Facebook, Windows or Mac suggests nobody has managed to avoid those pesky multicolored poultry.
Although the Samsung Galaxy Note came in for a little bit of ridicule when it was first announced to the world due to its sheer physical size, and the fact that it came bundled with a stylus, it actually turned out to be a great commercial success for the company and is certainly one of their most popular creations in recent times. That marketplace success is more than likely one of the main reasons why the Korean electronics giants have recently announced the launch of its successor, the Galaxy Note II, which as you might expect is once again a fairly sizeable creation, also coming packaged with the Samsung S Pen.
If you can't seem to decide between iOS, Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, then worry not, when 2013 comes around there will be another new kid on the block in the form of Mozilla's Firefox OS. Although the company has been seeding early builds of the operating system to developers since summer and actually introduced it to the world during Mobile World Congress, there is little that we actually know about it.
Samsung may have been shrouded in a little bit of controversy over the last few weeks and had their public reputation somewhat tarnished, but that doesn't detract from the fact that they produce some fantastic and popular devices, that are in some cases, ahead of the competition in the industry. I am willing to go out on a limb and suggest that their legal wrangling's with Apple are far from over, with more to come surrounding Apple's request to have specific devices banned in the United States, but until that day in court comes upon us, there is some good news on the horizon for Samsung Galaxy S III owners.
If you were one of the many people around the world who took the plunge and purchased the Google Nexus 7 when it was first announced during the annual I/O conference back in June, then congratulations on making a great decision. Google has managed to work together with ASUS to design and develop a rather fantastic little tablet that really manages to sit in a class of its own within its size category. Google may not be everyone's company of choice, but they have managed to release a product that has immediately become one of the best tablets on the market for the price point it sits at.
The Galaxy S III handset brought with it a wide level of excitement from Android users who couldn't wait to get their hands on the powerful new device, but also from the wider technology loving community who couldn't wait to see which direction Samsung had taken with the successor to their insanely popular Galaxy S II smartphone. Judging from the sales figures of the S III, it doesn't look like consumers have been disappointed with the hardware, but there was one feature that was widely expected to be included, and was notably missing in action at release.
The TabletSMS application that is available from the Google Play Store is an extension to the extremely popular DeskSMS service that users have been enjoying on their Android devices for quite some time. For those that may not be familiar with what DeskSMS brings to the table, it is basically an installation that allows users of Android smartphones to send and intercept messages from a variety of services such as network texting, Google Talk or GMail. The app has been extremely popular due to the fact that it essentially allows users to send text messages that originate from their number, using popular messaging browsers or chat clients like Trillian or Beejive.
Although it has become one of the most hotly contested industries in the world at the minute and is potentially an extremely stressful market for manufacturers to be involved in, consumers should be taking the opportunity to sit back and reap the rewards and device choice that is coming out of the smartphone industry. It's becoming increasingly difficult to actually keep up with all of the different device launches and announcements, but generally speaking, the large manufacturers like Apple and Samsung make sure their products get noticed.
This may start a flame war, but in my opinion there is no doubt that smartphones released after 2007 have a design that is, in one way or another, inspired and influenced by the design of the original iPhone. Physical keyboards are almost completely dead, front side of smartphones are quite often dominated by their display etc. etc.
