[Weekend Poll And News Roundup] When Are You Planning On Making Your Next Android Phone Purchase?

Buying a smartphone is a lot like telling a joke - timing is everything. Purchasing a Galaxy S III a few months ago was probably fine and dandy, but today, everybody sort of knows we're closing in on the next round of product announcements for 2013.

When do I buy? Which announcement do I wait for? Do I buy as soon as my contract expires, or sit on my upgrade until something new comes along? It's easy to get paralyzed into a sort of gadget anxiety - where you never commit to buying anything, because who knows what could be coming next. I admit, it's happened to me more than once. I'm on the verge of clicking that "submit order" button, and I chicken out at the last second. For most people, it's probably not a concern - having the latest and greatest is enough, even if it's only the latest and greatest for a few months. But for us tech lovers, it's serious business.

This year, we'll undoubtedly see a lot of cool new smartphones announced. So what are you waiting on before you drop your hard-earned cash? (The poll answers aren't super specific, so definitely elaborate in the comments section about your choice.)

When are you making your next Android phone purchase?

• I know what I want - I'm just waiting for it to come out / become available.
• I have what I want already - call me in 2014!
• I'm holding off until Samsung announces the Galaxy S IV and / or next Note.
• I'm sitting tight for the next Nexus phone.
• I'm going to wait until Motorola announces its new device.
• I'm not - my next phone won't be running Android.

Sony Announces Xperia Tablet Z – Quad-Core, 6.9mm Thick, And 10.1-Inch 1920x1200 Screen

Rumors have been bumping around the internet for a few days now, but Sony has finally put the speculation to rest. The Xperia Tablet Z has been announced, but only for the Japanese market at this point. The Xperia Tablet Z is the tablet counterpart to the recently announced Xperia Z phones, and it's running Android 4.1 at launch.

 

The Tablet Z has a 10.1-inch LCD screen at 1920x1200 with Sony's Bravia 2 post-processing engine. Inside, it's packing the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro at 1.5GHz per-core, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage (with an SD card slot), and an NFC chip. Unlike a lot of other OEMs, Sony is also including its flagship camera sensor, the 8.1MP Exmor R on the back.

The Xperia Tablet Z is going to be just 6.9mm thick and weighing 495g. How does that compare to, say, the Nexus 10? Google's 10-inch tablet is not nearly as slim at 8.9mm. The Nexus 10 also weighs more, tipping the scales at 603g. Sony's tablet is also water-proof just like the recently announced Xperia Z phone. Sony's Japanese announcement points out that the device supports LTE, but there's no telling what form it will take when it arrives on American or European shores. Pricing and availability are unknown at this point, but maybe Mobile World Congress will bring the details.

Hands on with Facebook Graph Search

Remember the time you liked Nickleback’s page on Facebook when you were all of 16? Or when you liked Chetan Bhagat enough to follow his page updates? You may not, but Facebook remembers all your likes, dislikes and check-ins. All of the data, the simple page likes have all been brought back by Facebook, packaged in a fancy, shiny new avatar called Graph Search. What Graph Search does is simple. You can figure out what your friends like, where they dined last evening, TV shows your friends of friends have been watching or even single people who share the same interests as you without having to leave Facebook. Once you have Graph Search, simply through a string of keywords, you can find out information that you need on a more social level on the social networking website itself. Excited yet? Or does this sound plain creepy? We took Facebook’s Graph Search for a spin to see what exactly it can do, or not. The first time you start using Graph Search, you will feel like a kid in a candy shop. There is just so much you would like to search for. Funny things your friends like, or maybe figure out great places to go or which movie to rent tonight but don’t know where to start. Basic searching I started off by searching for friends who stay in my city. ‘My friends who live in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India’ threw up results of more than a hundred friends. Friends' details were stacked one above the other on the left, along with additional details like where they work, the music they listen to and mutual friends. Facebook understands that I will probably need to fine tune the list and bring it down to maybe friends in Mumbai who hail from New Delhi. Graph Search is equipped with a refine tool situated on the right that helps you filter down your search to the hometown, gender, relationship status and even the school or college attended by your friends in Mumbai. Very stalkerish, right? Neatly stacked, informative friends card Dating and relationships  Relationship status has been something of a Facebook speciality. Ever since the feature’s debut, it has generally been considered to be somewhat of a status symbol to display one’s relationship status on the profile. The feature made an appearance on Facebook before it did on any other social networking website and searching for your single friends has never been this easy. What’s better is that you can refine the search with your likes and dislikes. I left it to Graph Search to suggest single male friends who liked Metallica and let it work its magic. Poor, naive Facebook, with no intimation about why I suddenly felt the need to find ‘single males’ with the same taste in music, threw up results of siblings. Lesson no. 1: Graph Search is in beta. It has a long way to go with becoming more intuitive. Tweaking some parameters, I asked Facebook to suggest friends of friends who lived in my city and liked Metallica. Not surprisingly, profiles of over a thousand men showed up. I opened up the refine tool further. To my surprise, the tool can help you get very, very specific with criteria likes school they attended, pages they are admins of, people you have interacted via comments earlier and whether or not they are friends with a particular friend. Oh, brother! Professional life on Facebook Next, I searched for colleagues who I am not friends with on Facebook. ‘Friends of friends who work in Tech2.com’ was enough to throw up useful results. Within the list, I could check out their photos, languages they speak, landmarks they’ve visited and more. I was able to view photos my colleagues had been tagged in that were open to public viewing or had their securities set to ‘friends of friends’. Thanks to Graph Search, you would need to be a little more careful about the data you put out on Facebook since information about you would be so easily available. I put my money on people turning this place into a second LinkedIn! See a lot more about people you work with Checking in with Graph Search The check-in feature of Facebook has been put to brilliant use with Graph Search. I searched for 'Chinese places my friends had been to' and got a host of results including pictures my friends had clicked at these places, which would probably make my decision to go to one of these restaurants very easy. I decided to relive my vacation to the Far East last year and searched for ‘Photos of mine taken in Singapore’. The images rolled out in a neat fashion, stacked in bunches of threes and fours of varying size that made going through them even in a thumbnail format a lot of fun. Check-ins put to use Not completely free of glitches While likes, relationship status, age, location all figure as a part of the Graph Search, one field conspicuous by its absence was Religious views. Trying to search for ‘Friends who are Atheists’ threw up a very confounding ‘Friends who like Atheists’ and ‘Friends who are interested in Atheists’. Facebook did warn me about this, though. Besides the fact that the service is in beta right now, Facebook puts up a small disclaimer at the end of each search that says, ‘Friendship-based searches are still being built, so you may see additional results here in the future.’ Point noted. Generic searches are a treasure trove To see how well Graph Search works without the parameter of ‘friends’ involved, I searched for a very generic ‘Photos of Qutub Minar’ and it threw up some very beautiful images shared by not just people, but also pages. If you’re willing to look beyond the general ‘what do my friends watch’ and ‘what do my friends like’, you will discover pure gold thanks to Graph Search. Basically, this was the first real place where I thought Graph Search really showed its worth. You can spend hours going through these images. Facebook is the new Flickr! Bottomline It is very unfortunate that Graph Search has been marketed and packaged in a way that the only use one could think of involves knowing what their friends or people in their extended circle are up to. Graph Search could prove useful for recruiters to spy on candidates too. Potentially, this feature could also put an end to the cumbersome, timeline themed friendship pages too. But most of all, Facebook has struck a lottery with a way to make more money off advertisements. Businesses like restaurants that already have their ads and sponsored stories appear on Facebook would love nothing more than Facebook recommending them to people searching for places to eat close to them. Creepy as it may sound, Facebook would do well if it can manage to dig through tons of status updates, comments and likes on various stories and photos if it has to truly and surely understand a person and his likes in order to spring him up during a search.

Three new iPhone variants to be launched in 2013?

Latest rumours out of Asia's supply chain hint at Apple launching three new smartphones in 2013. Besides the next generation iPhone, Apple is believed to be working on a cheaper version of its flagship phone and a mysterious phablet with a 4.8-inch screen tentatively dubbed the ‘iPhone Math’. Based on sources from upstream supply chain, investment news service BrightWire reported that the Cupertino-based company will unveil the three devices at staggered launches in 2013, with the first two being the next-generation iPhone and the 4.8-inch iPhone Math. Both are expected to sport 8 megapixel cameras. A third device, believed to be the iPhone 5S, is set to be launched at the end of the year; it will have a 12-megapixel camera.  Three new iPhones are rumoured to launch in 2013 Recently, there has been talk of Apple releasing a more affordable iPhone this year, but this is the first time that the so-called iPhone Math has been revealed. China Times, which picked up the BrightWire story, reports the company hopes to stay competitive in light of recent launches by rival Android smartphone manufacturers, which boast large displays and are branded as go-to devices for creative professionals. In 2012, Apple upped the screen size of the iPhone to 4 inches and now that seems to be a watershed moment. The new phablet will be positioned to take on the likes of Samsung's Galaxy Note series, as well as HTC and Sony's new 5-inch devices.  While clear details of the mysterious iPhone Math remain scarce, sources claim it will feature a display measuring at least 4.8 inches diagonal, almost a whole inch larger than the current iPhone 5. Form-factor and screen resolution are unknown at the moment, but a Retina-class display cannot be ruled out. What is known is that it will feature an 8-megapixel camera with lenses built by Largan Precision. The Chinese firm will be supplying nearly 8 million camera lenses for the next generation iPhone as well. While this is the first piece of information about a new device, earlier reports have noted that the next-generation iPhone will likely include a fingerprint scanner built into the Home button as a result of Apple’s acquisition of AuthenTec. The fingerprint scanner, which ironically was part of the rumour mill in the build up to the iPhone 5 launch, will replace the standard practice of usernames and passwords, allowing users to authenticate in a more efficient manner while also allowing users to integrate the fingerprint credentials with apps such as Passbook and mobile payment apps. The rumour mills are also buzzing with word of a more affordable iPhone range. The new model will be similar in design to the iPhone 5 but will feature a plastic or polycarbonate chassis instead of the more expensive aluminium chassis and is believed to be available in six different colours.  Component shipments for the two handsets, i.e. touchscreen panels, cameras etc., will reportedly begin in March before a late-April production timeline. Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn is said to be responsible for putting together 90 percent of the orders. These claims are in line with previous analyst predictions regarding the production timeline of the iPhone 5 follow-up as manufacturing is expected to begin in March ahead of a launch in Q2.

Samsung prepping Galaxy Note 8.0 to challenge iPad mini

The tablet war is going on in full force. According to SamMobile, Samsung is all set to reveal a new device in the company's Note line-up. The new device, dubbed Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, will be available in two versions—the GT-N5100 3G/Wi-Fi version and the GT-N5110 Wi-Fi only version. It will have an 8-inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 800, a 5 megapixel rear camera along with 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, 2GB of RAM, 16/32GB of internal storage and a microSD slot. It will be powered by a 4600 mAh battery. On the connectivity side of things, the Note 8.0 will have Bluetooth 4.0, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n and A-GPS. It will run on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The dimensions of the tablet will be 211.3 x 136.3 x 7.95 mm and will weigh around 330 g. Judging by the specifications and the screen size, it looks like Samsung is going to compete with Apple's iPad mini. Like this, but slightly bigger The company will be introducing the tablet at MWC 2013. Just yesterday, rumours of a Galaxy Note III were popping up. The rumour comes from a report in the Korea Times that mentioned the Galaxy Note III, along with a couple of specifications of the device. According to the report, Galaxy Note III will be pushing even further in terms of screen size, with a whopping 6.3-inch display. This is a considerable bump compared to the 5.5-inch screen on Galaxy Note II. Another key feature of Note III will be that it will run on the Exynos 5 Octa chip that Samsung had showcased at CES 2013. Samsung had unveiled the Exynos 5 Octa during CES. It is based on the ARM big.LITTLE/Cortex A-15 architecture and is designed to be a low powered, high performance mobile processor.  According to Samsung, the performance of the chip is twice than that of anything available in the market today when it comes to 3D gaming. While the company hasn't unveiled full details about the chip yet, this chip may be able to run dual quad-core setups on a 28nm process. The Exynos 5 Octa will likely also power the rumoured Galaxy S IV. Earlier this month, a picture of the Galaxy S IV had popped up. While the legitimacy of the picture is up for debate, it is very likely that this is the next device in the Galaxy S series. The new phone is set to feature a much thinner bezel along with a bigger screen. Also notable is the lack of buttons on the front face. This points to Samsung finally making the shift towards on-screen buttons. Overall, the design is very reminiscent of the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Premier, with a greater focus on curves at the corners. Without an official statement by Samsung, though, this could be just a fake picture.

Sony's CEO Says He Wants To Focus On High-End Android Phones, But Is That Enough To Change Anything?

You can now count Sony among the smartphone manufacturers that have promised to narrow their portfolios, and move away from featurephones and other very cheap handsets.

Sony's CEO, Kazuo Hirai, speaking to Bloomberg, had this to say.

"We basically are out of the feature-phone business and in the Android-based smartphone business ... We are more in toward the high end of the market as opposed to trying to get into the commoditized portion."

So, what does that... mean, exactly? Sony's going to focus its phone business on the part of the phone market that's profitable? Shocker. Really, Hirai is just reiterating the company's new brand initiative - pushing Sony products as "premium" with unilaterally premium pricing. Like Apple. It makes sense, then, that Sony would not seek to undermine its new direction by making a lot of cheap phones.

Of course, we also know that like HTC and Motorola (at least before the buyout), Sony's going to break this promise all over the world in countries Americans like me can't find on maps. In emerging markets, companies like HTC, Sony, LG, and Samsung are fighting tooth and nail to win loyalty and brand recognition among consumers. Dangling a $600 smartphone above the head of someone who doesn't make that much in a month in the hope that they will aspire to own that product is a risky business strategy. It's a lot easier to make a phone that costs a quarter of that and bears a passing resemblance to the more expensive model.Really, what Sony's CEO more likely means (like what HTC 'meant') is that we won't see as many (or any) crappy Sony phones in the US and Europe, where consumers can generally afford, whether through subsidies or saving up, an expensive, fancy glass slab.

I'm not undermining the importance of such a shift, but I'm also skeptical of anyone saying the products Sony showed off as part of its new smartphone line (the Xperia Z and ZL) are really going to turn the company's fortunes around. Sure, they're the best smartphones Sony has made to date, but they're also entering a market that Samsung and Apple now unabashedly dominate.

In the US in particular, Sony's smartphone strategy has been befuddling. The company has partnered with AT&T on literally every phone they've sold in the US except the Xperia Play, which ended up on Verizon, too. Look it up - there hasn't been a single Sony smartphone on T-Mobile orSprint, and only one on Verizon.

The upside, I suppose, is that most people in the US really have no idea that Sony even makes smartphones. If you can call that an upside.

If Sony were able to get the Xperia Z or ZL on at least three of the four major carriers, perhaps some momentum could be built. Even then, though, they're entering a fiercely competitive market that has been hard on OEMs that I would argue make better products than Sony. HTC and Motorola have seen major market share shrinkage to Samsung in the past year in the US, where Sony has basically been a non-factor. As HTC showed with the One X, making a good phone - even a great one - simply isn't enough when Samsung and Apple TV commercials, newspaper ads, and billboards permeate the daily life of the American smartphone buyer.