Samsung Galaxy S series rumours.....

Would that particular LTE version be usable in the UK?

As for Touchwiz, it's pretty easy to install a custom ROM to get rid of that, even on a device as new as the S4. I can't see any great benefit to buying the 'Nexus' Galaxy S4 over a standard model. I'm guessing it is relatively easy to unlock a standard one.

 

Yes it will be usable in uk.
A couple of reasons,

No messing around rooting and installing roms and kernals that might be unstable.

The promise of instant upgrades directly from google, no waiting round for samsung.

No touchwhizz bloat right out of the box..yes I know thats obvious..but its so good I thought id mention it twice.

Er...its cheaper?

 

Well, even if you don't want to install custom ROMs, I'd say it was generally a good idea to root your phone as you can do so much more with a rooted phone. Of course, if you require more security of data for work and aren't too tech-savvy, you're probably best off leaving it unrooted.

I'm not in the market for a new phone at the moment so haven't looked what deals were available but, if the phone were available for around £430 ($649 at current exchange rates), it would be a reasonable enough deal. Best price I can find is £543 (after cashback) but that does include a 12 month Vodafone contract with unlimited calls and texts + 1GB data. I'd guess that this phone won't have any LTE support, however?

That said, the chances of this phone going on sale in the UK at £430 would probably be pretty slim!

 

Well its from the google store so im not sure, if it were any other device i would say we british would be getting ripped off.
It will defo have full LTE compatability you can bet on that, by mid 2014 the whole of england will be covered according to some EE promotion I saw, so it would be pretty stupid if it didnt.

I must admit as a tech savvy guy I have been very reluctant/suspicious of rooting my gs3 and installing custom roms, some time last year when myself and mize got one I looked at several you tube videos and found lots of them to be unstable, looked like a lot of messing around to me at the time, I dont know perhaps I was a bit hasty in my judgements?

 

The issue is that EE (horrible company - I still shudder at how bad the service was when I was on Orange) are using a different frequency for LTE to any of the US networks or, for that matter, the other UK networks when they bring their LTE services online.

Will the 'Nexus' S4 support all the necessary LTE frequencies and bands for the UK? I have to admit I'm not very well educated about LTE as it is just too preposterously expensive in the UK at the moment. That, and the fact that I would never use Orange/EE again unless I absolutely had to.

 

Well I'm on orange now and it's ok for me, I'm not sure about lte frequencies supported, but it uses a top of the line qualcomm baseband, they pretty much offer up all the frequency bands you would find in most countries I would presume, as galaxy s4 supports lte I would think that is supported in the UK, so providing it's unchanged hardware then it looks a sure bet.

 

Right then, full gsm arena battery tests are in for the galaxy s4 octa.
http://blog.gsmarena.com/battery-te...9500-galaxy-s4-complete-here-are-the-results/

Despite having Arms vaunted BIG.LITTLE architecture, it actually gets beaten by qualcomms upper mid range processor s600.

Talk time was really poor on the exynos 5410 at a paltry 11 hours, the qualcomm s600 got 60% more, also narrowly beating it in other tests.

Whether that reflects real world is another matter entirely.

 

It doesn't look that bad: I'd expect talk time and video time to be more dependent on other IP efficiency than on the cores efficiency.

 

It's a little odd that they test video playback battery life with an SD video. Wouldn't most videos people play back these days not be around 720p or something?

 

They should have updated the firmware to MDK at least, the one they're using is still from before official release.

 

http://www.sammobile.com/2013/05/30...disappointments-and-their-current-soc-future/

Wow Samsung

 

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/24/4768264/samsung-shows-off-working-curved-screen-smartphone

New model being announced in October:


Looks like Samsung will be the first with a curved AMOLED panel in a smartphone.
Is this the next trend?

 

I going to say "no".

 

Honestly, this looks pretty cool and all, but I don't really see the point.

 

Already have problems with my palm/hand accidently touching the screen due to the thin bezel on the s4. I'll pass.

 

Do we have any info yet on what processor model is in the galaxy note 3?

 

Snapdragon 800 in some places and Exynos 5420 in others.

 

I'd imagine that such a curved screen would be intended for use with some sort of a flip case. If the curved part of the screen is there mainly for display of notifications/messages without opening the case, I'd imagine it would be relatively straightforward to have the touch facility disabled when the case is closed.

 

Samsung and LG are selling really expensive OLED TVs -- $10k or more -- with curved screens.

People like the picture quality but many are saying they'll wait for flat screens.

And lower prices too.

 

We don't know yet what shape Samsung will actually go for. The picture that ToTTenTranz is showing is from a mockup that Samsung showed for CES. Samsung may go for something very different.