Motorola X Phone with 5-inch display, Key Lime Pie set for Google I/O?
The much-vaunted Motorola X Phone will pioneer the Android Key Lime Pie OS and arrive at Google I/O in May, if rumours this weekend are to be believed.
A post on the DroidForums website said the device will be the first handset to ship with the Android 5.0 update and will tout a virtually bezel-less, edge-to-edge, 5-inch display.
The post adds that, although an announcement may be made at the Google I/O conference, the Motorola X Phone will not be classed as a Nexus device, per se, but as an entirely new sub-brand.
Instead, according to the rumour, a Nexus-like UI will sit on top of the Android OS. The post said: "Supposedly, Motorola has been working hard to create a UI that both compliments & enhances the Android experience, and is intended to be Nexus-like."
Interesting, the rumour claimed that the new UI will integrate a host of new features to rival Samsung's S-Beam, S-Voice and the like.
Too soon?
Just last month, Google CEO Larry Page claimed it was too soon for a Motorola Nexus phone although the launch of the X Phone at Google I/O would be the fruit to be bourne of the big Motorola buyout of 2011. The company has been relatively quiet since the takeover, with no new, top-level handsets of note, but first dibs on Key Lime Pie would certainly put Moto back on the map The post does advise that the rumour be taken with "a grain of salt," but it's certainly an interesting tidbit and seems entirely plausible to us. Roll on, Google I/O.
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Report: Sharp cuts 9.7-inch iPad display production as iPad mini flies
Japanese manufacturer Sharp has reportedly cut the number of full-size iPad screens it builds for Apple.
Reuters' sources have claimed that the production line at Sharp's Kameyama plant is running at the 'minimal' level required, just to keep it moving.
The report says a seasonal slowdown may be behind the diminishing production levels as Apple manages its inventory, while analysts believe sales may drop by 40 per cent over Apple's Q4 figures.
Reuters also speculates that demand for Apple's iPad mini over the 9.7-inch tablet may be the cause. The 7.9-inch version has proved to be a massive hit with punters since its launch in October.
Neither Apple nor Sharp have commented on the reports.
Demand down?
Analysts Macquarie Research believe that Apple's full-size iPad will fall from 13 million to around 8 million when it announces its next set of figures. This may be down to the iPad mini, but also due to high-quality, low-cost Android options like the Amazon Kindle Fire or Google Nexus 7. The report follows claims that Apple has slashed orders for its iPhone 5 smartphone, due to falling demand. The speculation sent Apple stocks below $500 for the first time in months.
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Troubled Blockbuster to close 160 UK stores
High street video rental chain Blockbuster will shutter 160 of its UK stores following its collapse into administration.
Last week the company gave notice of closure for 29 of its 528 outlets. Now an additional 131 will get the chop.
The stores will not close immediately, but 760 of the company's 4,190 staff are now facing redundancy.
Administrator Deloitte has vowed that Blockbuster will continue trading while the search for a buyer continues.
Inevitable consequence
Joint administrator Lee Manning said: "Having reviewed the portfolio with management, the store closure plan is an inevitable consequence of having to restructure the company to a profitable core which is capable of being sold. "We would like to thank the company's employees for their support and professionalism during this difficult time. We are also grateful to the customers for their continued support." Blockbuster's woes followed the collapse of photography chain Jessops and entertainment retailer HMV in what is proving to be a brutal start to 2013 for the UK's high street.
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Intel working to help Steven Hawking reach ten words per minute
Processing giant Intel is working on a solution to allow renowned physicist Steven Hawking to communicate faster.
Hawking, 70, has suffered from a degenerative motor neuron desease for half a century and is only able to speak using a computer that picks up voluntary twitches in his cheek muscle.
Each twitch chooses a character from a screen in front of him, but as his condition has worsened, his speech has slowed and is currently down to one word per minute.
Amid fears that he may lose the ability to communicate completely, Intel believes it has made a breakthrough which could could help the scientist reach five or even ten words per minute.
Character-driven
Intel's chief technology officer Justin Rattner wants to make use of other areas of Hawking's face where he has limited motion, using the company's processing technology. Rattner said: "Up to now, these technologies didn't work well enough to satisfy someone like Stephen, who wants to produce a lot of information. "We've built a new, character-driven interface in modern terms that includes a better word predictor." The company, which has been helping Hawking since the 90s, is also exploring using facial recognition tech to create a new UI altogether. Let's hope its efforts prove fruitful.
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Roundup: 10 essential DIY apps for iPhone and iPad
DIY: depending on your point of view, it's either the most pleasurable way to spend a weekend, or a necessary evil designed to keep you from indulging in more fun activities, such as having a root canal.
Whichever camp you fall into, there are ways to make DIY more enjoyable, such as having the right tools for the job, or knowing how to undertake whichever mind-numbing/exciting task you're about to embark upon.
While this once involved rummaging around in your toolbox or scanning your bookshelves for that Readers Digest DIY manual you got free in 1997, here in 2012 it means looking no further than your iPhone or iPad (unless the tool required is a hammer).
There are dozens of apps on the App Store that can either act as a surrogate measuring tool (think spirit level), provide a means of keeping track of large projects, allow you to work out how much paint or wallpaper you need, or instruct you in the dark arts of tiling a bathroom or wallpapering a, er, wall.There are even apps that allow you to design a completely new home, furnish it, and then walk through it in 3D.
How do you know which of these apps are worth the ticket price? We're glad you asked. It just so happens that we've had a root around the App Store, downloaded a bunch of them, discarded those that aren't up to scratch and found some essential iPhone and iPad apps for DIY.
Whether you're an enthusiast or the most reluctant of screwdriver-wielders, there's something for you here that will make the next wet Bank Holiday weekend a little easier to bear.
1. Handy Man DIY
Manage any DIY project from your iPhone
Price: £1.49 / $1.99
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Handy Man DIY aims to be a complete project manager for any project, be it building an extension or re-decorating a bedroom. It's organised so that you're led into creating individual tasks as soon as you create the project, getting you working as quickly as possible.
You assign materials to these tasks from the app's huge built-in library of options, and then you assign a cost to those materials in turn. Separately, you specify the dimensions of the room, plus openings such as doors and windows. The app can then automatically calculate the total area of the walls and floor, making it easy to see what you'll require. In this way, it's easy to see how much paint you'll need, for example.
There are also written tutorials and links to YouTube videos to help you complete trickier jobs without putting your hammer through anything too important.
It's not perfect, though. There's no way to easily display the area of individual walls, so while you can see the total amount of paint you'll need, you can't quickly tell how much you'll need just for that all-important feature wall. And though you can edit the individual unit prices for the materials stored in the app's database, you can't change the currency displayed from US dollars to anything else. Nor can you add new items to the database, although existing materials' names can be edited.
2. Home DIY with Craig Phillips
Tips from the Big Brother winner - but don't let that put you off
Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Whatever you think of the way that Craig Phillips first came to public attention (by winning the first series of Big Brother, outing Nasty Nick in the process), he's an engaging and knowledgeable DIY presenter. Home DIY with Craig Phillips contains a collection of videos from the cheeky Scouser himself, covering topics such as papering a wall, tiling and laying laminate flooring.
That's not all there is to this app, however. There's a Projects section that allows you to add images, create to-do and shopping lists, and has a Calculations section for working out how much paint, wallpaper, or how many tiles you'll need. There's a spirit level, too. Calculations can also be accessed with specific projects, to allow you to quickly work out how many, say, tins of magnolia you need to buy.
But it's for the videos that most will come to this app and - though we hesitate to make such a complaint about a free app - we'd love it if there were more of them. The five that are included are slickly presented and delivered with Phillips' typical charm and enthusiasm. Even if more videos were added as In-App Purchase packages, it would be a worthwhile addition.
Photo Measures
Never find yourself in the shop without those all-important room measurements again
Price: £2.99 / $4.99
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
It's a familiar tale. You're in the paint aisle of the DIY store, trying to figure out how many tins of Hawaii Sand you need to cover the living room walls and you've forgotten your notes. Well, no more!
Photo Measures allows you to take a picture of anything - a room (or at least part of it); the boat you've just sanded down; or that fence that needs weatherproofing - and annotate it with measurements. You can zoom in and out to make adding the required numbers easier, add notes, and create categories for photos. Once you're done, save the annotated photo to your Photo Library, or send it by email.
Then when you get to the shop and realise you can't remember the size of that window in the living room, just open the photo and there it is. It would be great if the app were able to calculate measurements from photos automatically, but given the hardware limitations, that's unrealistic. And you could just write the measurements in the Notes app, but to us, a visual reference is always preferable.
Plumbing
Take the fear out fixing that leaky pipe with these helpful video guides
Price: 69p / 99¢
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Plumbing. Just the thought of it strikes fear into even the more intrepid DIY enthusiast. It conjures up images of rubber-gloved hands reaching into a pipe blocked up with who-even-knows-what, in order to stop the toilet spilling water over the bathroom floor.
Happily, that's where Plumbing, the app, comes in. It has video tutorials that show you how to fix common plumbing problems, from a toilet that won't flush properly to fixing a burst pipe. There are also videos for tasks like installing a water heater or waste disposal unit.
In addition, there's a glossary, and a written guide to common techniques, only with US phraseology. All the videos in Plumbing are taken from YouTube, and so accessible for free.
So, why pay for the app? Simple, because for 69p you can access videos that have been pre-selected and organised, thus saving you trawling through YouTube trying to find them. To us, that's 69p well spent.
Screwfix Toolbox
A useful app that combines online shopping with tools and tips
Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Screwfix isn't the only purveyor of DIY supplies to have its own app, but its effort stands head and shoulders above the others. It combines genuinely useful tools with online shopping and tutorials. The tools include a project cost calculator: enter the dimensions of the room you're painting, the patio your laying, or the fence you're erecting, and it will tell you how much of your chosen material you need and how much it will cost.
Another calculator works out the BTU/hour of any given room to allow you to decide how many radiators you'll need. There's also a spirit level and QR code scanner. That scanner can be used to scan adverts or in-store posters, in order to find out more about a product or to learn how to use it.
And Screwfix TV takes you to a library of 4,000 tutorial videos that will take you through how to do just about any DIY task you can dream up. A built-in catalogue would have been good, though.
DIY Cement
This app will have you mixing and laying in no time Price: Free Works with: iPhone, iPod touch Thankfully, there's ready-mix concrete for those of us who don't spend our days on building sites, but you still need to know what to buy and how to use it properly. DIY Cement, from Lafarge Cement, has tutorials on everything from laying a patio to building a barbecue and fixing fence posts. It'll tell you how to mix cement, how to build brickwork, and how to lay foundations. The tutorial videos are clear and easy to follow and will help anyone nervous about using cement for the first time. There's a cost calculator that will tell you which product you need how much of it you should order. And, of course, there's a store locator to help you find your nearest outlet. There's a product catalogue and downloadable datasheets, but there's no way to order materials from the company within the app. That's unfortunate, because, otherwise this is an invaluable tool for work with cement.Decor Advisor
Find the perfect brush or roller for your painting job
Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
Buying a paintbrush, sounds easy - just nip to the local DIY store and choose one that's the right size for the job. That is, until see the dozens of shelves stacked with brushes. Which to choose?
That's where Decor Advisor from brush and roller manufacturer Harris comes in. It will help you not only choose the right brush or roller for the job - a Harris model, of course - but tell you where your nearest Harris stockest is. In addition there are text-based tutorials (pictures would be helpful here) for tasks such as preparing walls, tiling and hanging wallpaper. Plus, there's a catalogue of Harris products.
It would have been useful to have prices, but since Harris is the manufacturer and not a retailer, any price stated would only have been a guide anyway. No decorating app would be complete without a cost calculator, naturally, and there's one on hand here.
Home 3D for iPad
Plan and visualise that new extension in three dimensions on your iPad
Price: £5.99 / $8.99
Works with: iPad
Home 3D's aim is nothing less than allowing you to build a 3D model of the room you want to refurbish, or the extension you plan to build, and then fill it with furniture. You can add wall and floor coverings, and view the results as either a two-dimensional plan or 3D model.
Home 3D comes with a library of fixtures, fittings and furniture that can be altered in size. You can use the floor or wall coverings supplied, or use any image in your Photo Library. Plans can be shared by Dropbox or email, and a walkthrough feature allows you to get a sense of your creation.
It's remarkably easy to use, too. Irregular rooms can be made by combining rectangles and removing walls. And if you get stuck there's no need to panic; there are video tutorials. Perhaps best of all is that all the content is included in the price. A remarkable app that's easier to use than many of its desktop counterparts.
iHandy Carpenter
Five very useful and beautifully rendered tools in one very useful app
Price: £1.49 / $1.99
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch
iHandy Carpenter includes a spirit level; a surface level, for measuring how flat that patio you've just laid really is; a protractor to ensure that you come at everything from the correct angle; a plumb line to make sure that wallpaper hangs straight, and a ruler, for, er, measuring stuff. The tools are all easy to use and work brilliantly, thanks largely to the iPhone's own built-in sensors.
It's also beautifully rendered; for example, the spirit level works in landscape and portrait mode, as you would expect, but tilt the iPhone backwards beyond 45 degrees and the bubble changes form, as if you were looking down from directly above it.
Limitations are those inherent in the iPhone itself. It's not big enough to make a decent ruler, for example. And there are times when only a twofoot long spirit level will do. But other than that, it's terrific value and a lovely app.
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In Depth: The highs and lows of free software
Our sister magazine Linux Format approached some of the brightest stars in the free software firmament to look back over the last 12 months and ask what's coming up over the next year.
Here's what they said…
Who was asked
Richard Stallman
The godfather of GNU, Stallman wrote the GPL, the licence that keeps free software free. He also wrote GCC, which lets us compile software for the Linux kernel.
Gaël Duval
The creator of Mandrake Linux, the first GNU/Linux distro to take usability seriously as a feature. As the boss of Ulteo, Gaël is taking the OS in a new direction.
Damien Conway
One of the elder statesmen of the Perl community, Damien designed Perl 6 and is thus responsible for the glue that holds the internet together. Kitten blogs wouldn't exist without him.
Ciarán O'Riordan
Ciarán campaigns against software patents in Brussels, for the aptly named End Software Patents. Even if you live outside the EU, he's trying to make your life better.
Clement Lefebvre
As the creator of Linux Mint, Clem is probably the man most in tune with what free software users want on a day-to-day basis. He's also involved with Mate and Cinnamon.
Stefano Zacchiroli
As Debian project leader, Stefano guides the most free distro of them all. Debian doesn't bend with the wind: it's principled, solid and it will be around forever.
What was the best thing to happen to free software over the last 12 months?
Damien Conway: For me, it's the continuing rise and rise of Git and GitHub. Both the technology and the website have, of course, been around for over half a decade now, but this past year seems to have been a kind of watershed in terms of uptake, usage, and general community awareness. The Git ecology isn't just an excellent example of free software in its own right; far more importantly, it's a massive enabler of collaborative free software development. Clement Lefebvre: Without a doubt, Mate. Gnome 2 is what most people used. It's rock solid, mature, it's got the best printing, communication and network configuration tools out there and they just work. It represents years of efforts, improvements, and a huge pool of third-party components, applets and themes. For it not to disappear and continue under a new name, that has to be the single best achievement of the year. Credit to the Mate team for stepping up and taking over its maintenance. I'm personally involved in one of the coolest projects out there, with Cinnamon, and I know people are excited about what we do, what Canonical does with Unity and what Gnome does with Shell. We're having a lot of fun and we're producing great technologies. There's a lot of buzz on the forums, IRC and in the press about these new desktops but they appeal primarily to the vocal minority of GNU/ Linux enthusiasts who follow the news, like to try new things and are happy to accept that everything isn't fully ready yet. There are a lot of users out there who don't upgrade as often, don't follow the latest blogs and who simply don't understand why something that worked well before isn't available anymore or lost features all of sudden. Mate is also a testament to free software and an illustration of what is commonly referred to as "freedom". Here we were, faced with a situation where the most popular GNU/Linux desktop was discontinued by its developers and no longer maintained. Thanks to the fact that it was licensed under the GPL, people from the GNU/Linux community gathered, formed a new team and took over its maintenance. This is a credit to that freedom that we all have to not only enjoy software, but to modify it to our needs, to redistribute it in an open manner, and for it to live beyond the scope or the interest of its original authors. Gaël Duval: There have been many interesting things happening in 2012, and maybe one of the biggest is the huge open source acceptance in IT. Open source is now everywhere, and I can't see as much FUD about it as there used to be earlier in this century. However, one notable thing, that didn't make much noise, is perhaps the reorganisation of Mandriva Linux, and the creation of an OpenMandriva Foundation. There are a lot of good things happening there, deep changes that deserve more exposure in the IT world. Stefano Zacchiroli: I'm going to go with something quite controversial: the Apple vs Samsung patent fight. Software patents don't stop being a huge threat to free software, especially in countries like the US, but in many others around the world with different shades of grey. I'm convinced that what we really need to fix that is a thermonuclear war among big players on software patents. Eventually they'll realise (for the few who didn't yet) that the current status of software patents is against even their own interests and beg for patent reform. This seems to have started, or escalated to a next level, in 2012 with cases like Apple vs Samsung. Now we just have to hope that patent reforms won't end up being worse than the status quo… On the same topic, I've been thrilled to see the voices of economists trying to explain that patents do not actually promote innovation (like Boldrin & Levine) reaching mass media, in the US and elsewhere.What was the biggest fail of 2012?
DC: Java. I can appreciate the language and the wider ecosystem, but I hate the politics, the buck-passing, and the lack of quality control and security that are crippling it on so many platforms. CL: SCO! That has to the biggest of them all. Regarding Miguel de Icaza's comments on Linus Torvalds, desktop Linux and Mac OS X… I have a lot of respect for what Miguel did, but look, when my iPhone doesn't sync with my operating system because Apple designed it not to work with anything else than iTunes, I don't think my operating system is broken, I think there's something wrong with my phone. I also don't agree on looking up to Mac OS or iOS as what desktop Linux 'should' be - I wouldn't work on these platforms, and I don't think they're doing a better job, not for our audience anyway. Apple is very successful but I think it's primarily to do with its image, its marketing, and the superb quality of its hardware design. The other big fail was when Flash was announced as a future "Chromium exclusive". I'm hoping that YouTube will fully support HTML 5 in time for Google not to kill Firefox on the GNU/Linux desktop. Ironically, it might survive thanks to iOS not supporting Flash and we might end up thanking Apple for that. Richard Stallman: I'm not sure the word "fail" is adequate to describe the surveillance-and-ads malfeature in Ubuntu GNU/Linux. This is no accident: it is a deliberate wrong. When Ubuntu users search their own files, Ubuntu sends their search terms to Canonical. This abuses their privacy. Then Canonical sends them ads to buy from Amazon, a company that mistreats its workers, publishers, authors and the users. See http://stallman.org/amazon.html for why you should not buy from Amazon. Free software developers usually don't dare put in malicious features; they know that if they do, people will switch to corrected (non-malicious) versions. The prospect of such failure usually discourages anyone from trying it. This exception suggests that Canonical thinks it has so much influence that it can get away with abuse. For the sake of our community's reputation, we should teach Canonical that is not so. GD: I'm not very happy with Android-Linux as it is now for many reasons. It seems to me that it's driven by costs, not innovation, and that it doesn't give that much back to Linux. CO'R: More of a setback than a fail, but I think Microsoft's Restricted Boot is the biggest negative event of 2012. Locked-down handhelds and PCs are the biggest threat to free software, bigger than software patents. SZ: Secure Boot. It is a debate that has taken the free software world by storm, and it seems more and more a lose-lose situation. On one hand the use case to defend against pre-boot malware is real. On the other, it has shown how skewed the hardware market is. Either you're among the big guys able to convince hardware vendors to include your own keys, or you have to beg for signatures of your boot images or force your users to go through painful key enrolling processes.
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Cloud storage service 'Mega' launches
Mega, a cloud storage site and successor to closed file-hosting site MegaUpload, launched today, garnering 250,000 users in its first two operating hours.
One year ago today, the United States Department of Justice closed down the site MegaUpload due to its hosting of scads of data infringing on a wide swathe of copyrights.
Today, MegaUpload founder and martyr Kim Dotcom opened the doors to his new site, Mega, which currently functions as a cloud storage site similar to Dropbox.
Because of the huge initial response, though, the site has been periodically unavailable, causing plenty of excited MegaUpload loyals to wait to access their free 50GB of cloud storage.
Supersize meh
The big announcement today came directly from Dotcom via Twitter, where the eccentric New Zealand-based entrepreneur said, "As of this minute one year ago Megaupload was destroyed by the US Government. Welcome to http://Mega.co.nz." Just two hours after opening the site, Dotcom also reported that 250,000 users had registered on the site. The high volume has caused the site to be accessible only intermittently, but Dotcom has reassured anxious users that "the guys are working on balancing the load," so a fix is in progress. In an interview with Ars Technica, one of Dotcom's lawyers, Ira Rothken, confirmed the defensible legality of this re-imagined site, and even touted the services added security encryption. For a full breakdown of what services Mega is slated to offer, check out TechRadar's full write-up. Via CNET
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Review: HTC One SV
Introduction
The HTC One SV isn't exactly a new handset, more or a reboot of the HTC One S which launched back at MWC 2012. That said the One SV arrives sporting a new chassis and slightly differing specifications under the hood, the most of important of which is its 4G capabilities. Available SIM-free from around £315 the HTC One SV is pretty much the same price as the year-old One S – give or take a couple of quid – making it a rather attractive proposition while potentially killing off its sibling.
Contract deals for the One SV are slightly more expensive on the UK's only 4G network with EE wanting at least £36 per month for two years in exchange for a free handset.
This puts it in competition with the Google Nexus 4, Sony Xperia T, and the Windows Phone 8 powered HTC 8X and 4G enabled Nokia Lumia 820.
While price wise there may not be much between the two, the HTC One SV has a significantly different body which doesn't come close to the premium finish we enjoyed on the One S.
It's out with the aluminium frame and its 'micro-arc oxidisation treatment' and in with a noticeably plastic chassis which actually weighs more than its predecessor at 122g thanks to the size gain round the waist – up from 7.8mm to an almost porky 9.2mm in the midriff.
All that aside though and the HTC One SV still sits comfortably in the hand with the soft touch plastic case providing a decent level of grip on our palm while our fingers were easily able to wrap round the handset.
The power/lock key located on the top of the One SV alongside the 3.5mm headphone jack and the volume rocker switch are both easily reached during one-handed use thanks to the phone's compact 128 x 66.9mm dimensions.
An added benefit of the re-jigged design is that you can easily remove the back cover of the HTC One SV which not only gives you access to the microSIM and microSD slots, but also the removable 1,800mAh battery – which has been given a slight bump to improve the life of the phone.
On the front of the One SV you'll notice that HTC has kept its Android touch buttons below the screen with back, home and multi-tasking revealing this handset is running at least Android 4.0.
Sadly there's no sign of Jelly Bean on the HTC One SV, with the phone being equipped with Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich – disappointing considering Jelly Bean has been available for six months now.
Above the control tools is the 4.3-inch, 480x800 Super LCD 2 display which while being the same size as the offering on the One S actually has a lower resolution than the Super AMOLED screen – boo!
Screen quality is still pretty darn good but it doesn't quite have the pop of the display that impressed us so much on the One S, which is disappointing as we'd expect the One SV to be at least on par with its sibling.
Something which has been given a boost on the HTC One SV is the front facing camera which comes in at 1.6MP and sits besides an incredible long ear piece – perfect for those who have trouble locating their ear while on the phone. Phew.
The extra large ear piece isn't all fun and games though and its recessed nature means it's a great place for dust to collect, making the One SV look rather untidy once it's spent some time in a pocket or bag.
Round the back the bulbous circular camera fitting has been replaced with a more refined oval sitting flush to the rear of the One SV.
You get a distinctly average 5MP camera, once again another compromise from HTC on the One SV, with a single LED flash for company, although it will record video at 1080p.
The HTC logo is slightly indented which led us to run our finger over it many times, just because we liked the feeling.
At the base you get a nod towards the One SV's network capabilities with "4G LTE" emblazoned above the speaker grill, with the Beats Audio technology logo below it, showing that Dr Dre's fancy music tech is housed inside.
The white back plate does attract marks and we managed to pick up numerous smudges on it after just a day or so.
Luckily it wipes clean with a damp cloth, but when you pull out your new HTC One SV to show off to your mates you'll be laughed out the pub when you flip it over to reveal grubby finger prints – oh the shame.
On the face of it the HTC One SV may share a similar name to impressive One S, but a number of compromises when it comes to build quality and specifications leaves us feeling a little unfulfilled and with a handset which is closer to the significantly cheaper HTC One V.
Thanks to unlocked-mobiles.com for sending us a HTC One SV to review and to EE for supplying us with a 4G sim.
Interface
As we mentioned in the introduction the HTC One SV comes running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, and while we expect an upgrade to Jelly Bean is almost certainly on the cards we're surprised it didn't ship with it out of the box.
HTC's Android overlay is in play as well on the One SV with Sense 4.1 installed – which also isn't the latest version of the software with the HTC One X+ which arrived last year sporting Sense 4+ alongside Jelly Bean.
Software disappointment aside the HTC One SV at least packs a relatively good amount of power with a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM under the hood.
Coupled with a responsive screen Android runs smoothly on the One SV, allowing us to glide through the homescreens – of which you can have a maximum of seven – and skip through the app draw without hassle.
It's not quite as zippy as the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S3 or Sony Xperia Z, but we wouldn't expect it to be and even though its dual-core processor isn't as punchy as the chip in the One S, the two handsets are pretty much on par performance wise.
In true HTC fashion the Android lock screen has been dabbled with to include the Taiwanese firm's famous ring-pull unlock process with four shortcuts allowing you to jump to key apps right from the off.
Anyone who has a soft spot for quick settings in the notification drop down will be disappointed with HTC as with its other handset the One SV doesn't provide any here, with a link to the full settings menu the only reprieve.
It's not a critical issue as a widget can be placed on a homescreen giving you control over the main functions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS but seeing as the notification bar can be accessed from the lock screen it would have been nice to see the controls there too.
Hold down on a blank space on any homescreen and the widgets menu will spring up, with a plethora of HTC widgets alongside the stock Android ones giving you a wealth of choice.
A simple drag and drop will see the widget of your choosing plonked onto the homescreen and a similar action will delete it if you hover over the "remove" icon at the top of the screen.
Apps open swiftly and a handy little feature on the HTC One SV is the ability to use the multi-tasking key as the traditional Android menu button by just holding it down – allowing you to easily access additional settings in applications which are yet to adopt the new button-less operation Google is pushing for.
The multi-tasking menu itself has been given a Sense 4.1 makeover with large portrait thumbnails arranged in a horizontal line giving you a clear over view of your recently used apps.
You can force close apps running in the background by sliding you finger up, over the thumbnail to save on data and battery consumption, as well as quickly flipping between various apps.
Contacts and Calling
Contacts
The HTC One SV carries on the Taiwanese firm's strong heritage in the contacts management arena allowing you to seamlessly import details from various sources into one compact list.
Not only is the One SV able to pull in contacts from the likes of Google, Facebook and your email accounts, it will also wiz through them joining up any duplications, such as your friends phone number stored in your Google account and their Facebook profile.
Annoyingly there's no support for Twitter in this contact love-in, which will frustrate those who prefer the 140 character system over the expansive blue book.
HTC's system is scarily efficient at matching your buddies up with their various accounts and if it's not completely sure the One SV will offer up suggestions on accounts which could be joined, which more often than not are spot on.
The "People" app is your one stop shop for all your acquaintances, but this can also be accessed from the "Phone" icon as both lead to the same application, with different tabs displaying depending on which one you've hit.
Pictures of your contacts are displayed next to their names in an attractive vertical list, if the One SV has managed to pull one through from an account, and you'll find it's not just the photo which has been mined by the handset.
Facebook photo galleries and status updates are also pulled through to contact's cards, allowing you to get an overview of their life without having to launch a dedicated app.
There's also a record of all the calls and messages you've exchanged with each person – handy if you want to keep track of your stalking tendencies.
Adding a contact is also a piece of cake, just in case you run into a new pal at the bus stop, with a simple "add" button at the top of the screen in the People app taking you to a form to add in various details.
Calling
As we've mentioned above you can access the dial pad from the Phone and People applications if you need to bash out a number.
Alternatively you can head on over to a contact's card and tap the number you wish to call them on – all very straight forward.
Signal wise the HTC One SV held up well, although the 4G strength unsurprisingly dwindled the further we came away from London, but thankfully 3G was waiting to take over without fuss.
Call quality was decent and we were able to hear our compatriot clearly on the other end and vice versa – even in busier locations with a lot of noise pollution.
Messaging
Messaging from emails to texts is second nature to smartphones these days and the HTC One SV is no exception. Thanks to the Android OS on the One SV you've got easy access to various forms of character-based communication. You're encouraged to sign in to your various accounts during the first time setup on the HTC One SV – and if you do so you can shoot off into the wonderful world of internet based communications straight away.
The stock Android email and Gmail apps are present, with the former letting you add several addresses in one place and view them in an unified inbox, or separately if you're really popular.
Google insists the Gmail app has to appear on all Android phones and while it's an excellent client for dealing with your Gmail address it's a shame you can't add your other accounts to the app and do away with the other completely.
Back over with the standard email app and while it may not be quite so feature-packed it's still an intuitive and easy to use system which allows you to add your Gmail address along with any others you may have, meaning you can do away with the official client if you so wish.
The ability to quickly switch between inboxes or view them in one feed is great for productivity and something we enjoy using on any Android handset, not just the One SV.
Text messaging is the standard Android affair with a bit of HTC Sense glitz thrown on top for a slightly more unique layout although it won't out fox anyone familiar with Android, or anyone who has used a smartphone in the past.
A handy feature in the messaging app is the ability to increase and decrease the text size by simply pinching and zooming – perfect for those with poorer eyesight or if you want to see a whole message at once without having to scroll.
If you've got a soft spot for social networking then the HTC One SV comes preloaded with the official Facebook and Twitter applications, plus Google+ is also onboard for the super trendy among you.
HTC has always been one of the better manufacturers when it comes to keyboards and the board on the One SV follows in the famed Sense footsteps of handsets past.
However we did find it a little cramped on the One SV, but that may be because we've been using the Galaxy Note 2 recently and our fingers have become accustomed to its massive screen.
With a 4.3-inch display there is plenty of space on the One SV and we did get used to the layout after a few days, although eventually we buckled and downloaded the trusty SwiftKey keyboard which we find outperforms any other Android offering.
Internet
Web browsing is one of the key features on the HTC One SV as after all it is a 4G enabled handset – one of a select few currently available in the UK. Of course only a handful of cities actually provide 4G at the moment, for the rest of you outside these high-speed hubs you'll be stuck with good old 3G. If you're conscious of eating through your data in next to no time then you'll be pleased to learn that the One SV also features Wi-Fi, allowing you to jump onto your home, office or McDonald's network without fear of racking up a huge bill.
The One SV sports two browsers out of the box with the stock Android offering accompanied by Google Chrome, which is only available on handsets running Ice Cream Sandwich or higher.
If you're lucky enough to be housed in a 4G area then as you'd expect web speeds are impressively fast, with full-fat TechRadar loading in under five seconds, banners and all in both browsers.
You get similar load speeds over Wi-Fi as long as you've got a decent signal strength, while 3G browsing appeared to be variable adding a few seconds to the speeds witnessed on 4G.
Overall the One SV is a strong performer capable of mixing it with the big boys such as the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3 when it comes to the internet.
On the whole there's little to choose between the two browsers on the One SV, with Chrome offering a lighter colour palette over the stock app's black hues.
A key feature which is missing from Chrome however is the ability to save pages for offline reading – something the Internet app provides along with a reading mode, which strips out all the adverts and images from an article leaving with you an easily digestible page of text.
Text automatically reflows in both browsers allowing you to happily read articles without have to scroll sideways as well as down, and both can sync with your Google account allowing you to access bookmarks stored in the cloud.
Websites look good, but not great thanks to the lower resolution display HTC has decided to lump in the One SV, but text is still perfectly legible once zoomed in.
Luckily HTC seems to have resolved the shut-down issues which plagued the One S browser when you flicked through sites too quickly, with no force closures witnessed during our One SV review period.
Adobe Flash is a dying art form and is not supported on the HTC One SV which is not a huge problem (or surprise), but may infuriate those of you who still frequent flash-based sites.
Camera
The HTC One SV comes equipped with a 5MP camera which is disappointing considering for the same money you can pick up the One S which not only has a better screen and faster processor, but also an 8MP snapper. On top of this the One SV is priced towards the top end of the mid-range smartphone bracket and all its rivals sport 8MP cameras including the Nexus 4 and 8X while the Xperia T boasts 13MP.
Thankfully there is a single LED flash round the back with gives the One SV back some credibility but the promise of 1080p video raises our suspicions over quality, but more on that in the next section.
Something which has been given a bump on the HTC One SV is the front facing camera which is now 1.6MP making for smoother, clearer video calls and more in-depth vanity checks – lovely.
The camera application can be accessed easily from the default shortcuts on the lockscreen as well as from the icon in the app list, opening up in a jiffy meaning there's hardly any time to wait before you can get snapping.
HTC has waved its Sense wand over the application giving it a different look and feel to the stock Android offering, but it's beautifully simple to use.
You get large shutter and record buttons on the right of the screen, with a link to the gallery below and the effects menu above.
There are 15 effects to choose from including distortion, vignette and greyscale allowing you to create a unique photo.
Camera scenes such as HDR and panorama are also supported on the HTC One SV and you can easily toggle the flash by hitting the button in the top left corner of the screen.
A digital zoom lets you get closer to the subject you're shooting, but quality dramatically diminishes so we'd recommend leaving the slider well alone.
Picture quality as you may have already guessed is a little lack-lustre, especially when you compare the snaps against those taken on rival handsets.
Photos lack clarity and colour and you're left with results which wouldn't look out of place on a budget handset – but the HTC One SV will set you back over £300. Poor show.
You can tweak the effects, scene modes and variables such as white balance and contrast but at the end of the day it is what it is – a poor camera on a phone which is demanding more money than it possibly should.
Click here to see the full resolution image
Click here to see the full resolution image
Click here to see the full resolution image
Click here to see the full resolution image
Click here to see the full resolution image
Click here to see the full resolution image
Click here to see the full resolution image
Click here to see the full resolution image
Video
Disappointing camera aside the HTC One SV surprises when it claims it can shoot full HD, 1080p video. To say we were sceptical would be an understatement but low and behold dive into the video settings in the camera app and there it is: Video quality Full HD (1920x1080). HTC has decided to do away with the unnecessary camcorder icon which adorned the app list on previous handsets and only served to turf you into the camera anyway, with the redesigned camera app making it very easy to start recording.
There's no messing about with a toggle switch to flip flop between camera and camcorder – instead the record button is right next door to the shutter key, give it a press and the red light comes on. Simples.
An HTC staple and something we wish more manufacturers would pick up is the ability to take photos while recording with the shutter button staying on screen with the record key during filming.
It seems such a simple system and can come in very handy, and we're pleased the One SV hasn't missed out on this feature.
Something you don't see too often on smartphones these days is the ability to capture footage in slow motion.
First pioneered by the LG Viewty the technology has been seemingly swept under the carpet by the majority of manufacturers but HTC is bucking the trend including the technology on the One SV and a host of other devices.
Video quality, considering it's supposed to be 1080p, isn't great with the HTC One SV struggling to track moving objects smoothly and the overall effect looking a bit grainy.
Media
With a 4.3-inch screen and Beats Audio technology the HTC One SV has the makings of a media mogul.
Unfortunately the One SV lets itself down massively when you take a peek at the internal storage. 8GB. Yes you've ready that correctly, just 8GB. Now consider a chunk of it will be taken up by the operating system and you're realistically left with around 6GB.
Luckily there's a microSD slot hiding under the rear cover of the One SV capable of supporting cards up to 32GB in size so all is not lost, but we can't help feel we've got off on the wrong foot here.
HTC has a lovely little deal with cloud storage firm Dropbox and anyone who purchases on of the Taiwanese company's handsets automatically gets 25GB of free storage – handy for keeping your documents and photos backed up – which the One SV can do for you in the background.
Getting content on and off the HTC One SV is all pretty simple, connect the phone up to your computer with the supplied USB cable and you'll be dragging and dropping to your hearts content.
Music
A one stop shop for all your musical needs on the HTC One SV? Well that will be the cunningly titled Music app then.
Not only does it give you access to any songs you may have lovingly copied onto the One SV there are also links to other apps including SoundHound, TuneIn Radio and 7Digital – all of which come installed on the phone out of the box.
And if you prefer using different music apps most, if not all will appear in this hub as well once you've installed them from Google Play.
We'll kick off with the standard music player which offers up a no nonsense set of tools including play/pause, skip, shuffle and repeat – so all your favourites.
On the player screen you get a large image of the album art with the straight forward controls beneath.
The party trick up the sleeve of the HTC One SV is the Beats Audio technology hidden inside which activates itself when you plug in a pair of headphones.
Dr Dre's wizardry gets to work beefing up your tracks, enhancing the bass and giving a pleasing audio experience even with the average set of buds provided in the box.
All the main audio formats are supported here including MP3, WMA, WAV and AAC – so you shouldn't have too much trouble porting your personal collection across to the One SV.
The SoundHound app allows you to find out what tune is playing on the radio as the app listens to a snippet of the track and then searches its vast library of songs in a few seconds to tell you what you're listening to.
7Digital is an online music store allowing you to purchase and download tracks straight onto the HTC One SV.
Most songs will set you back around 99p, while albums mostly range from £5 to £9.99, which is generally the going rate on most music sites.
It sports a similar layout to Google Play which means anyone who's used the Android app store before won't find it difficult to navigate round the 7Digital app.
Finally TuneIn Radio gives you access to hundreds of internet radio stations which can be browsed by music genre, ensuring you'll always be able to find music that you want to listen to.
The 4G connectivity inside the HTC One SV means that streaming the stations is a breeze with no buffering or lost connections – however the same can't be said if you're on the move as mobile signal is never reliable.
A FM radio also sneaks its way onto the One SV which requires a set of headphones to be plugged in to act as an antenna, letting you listen to the radio in the classic way without the need for a data connection.
Video
At 4.3-inches the display on the HTC One SV is a suitable size for watching video on the go, sadly though the resolution isn't as great as you'd expect from a smartphone costing over £300. There's no dedicated video player app installed on the One SV, so you'll either have to download one from Google Play or route around in the gallery app to find the clip you fancy.
The HTC One SV supports MP4, WMV, H.263 and .264 video formats as well as AVI, so make sure your clips comply with one of these before copying them onto the handset.
The video player provides the basics with play/pause, skip and scrub controls, but you also have the option to lock the controls to avoid any unwanted finger presses plus you can turn capture mode on if you want to grab a shot of your favourite scene.
Beats Audio technology is on hand to boost the sound if you're listening via headphones or speakers plugged into the 3.5mm jack.
Video playback isn't too bad considering the lower quality screen HTC has slapped inside the One SV and we were able to watch a movie comfortably on the phone.
On closer inspection you'll notice the detail isn't as good as on rival handsets boasting better screens, but for the casual watcher the One SV will suffice.
Google's Play Movies app comes pre-installed on the One SV giving you access to a library of films available for rent and purchase.
Prices do vary but most rentals are around the £3.50 mark, while purchases will set you back around £10. This falls pretty much in line with other services, but DVDs can be picked up for less online for selected titles.
Not content with letting Google have it all its own way HTC offers its own video service in the form of Watch.
Watch offers up a slightly different selection of movies and price wise it's very similar to Play Movies, give or take a few quid here and there.
The Watch app is not quite as pretty to look at, but its basic layout is easy to navigate and there's a clear distinction between buy and rental prices.
If you fancy yourself as the next big Hollywood director then you'll want to check out the Movie Editor app, allowing you to crudely cut, chop, paste and compile your clips into one lovely video complete with audio, pictures and text.
It's certainly not as full featured as a desktop software package, but it works well and can be fun for the odd quick mash up.
Photos
Photos are stored in the gallery app, where you'll also find your movies and the HTC One SV uses the familiar Android thumbnailed layout for easy browsing.
If you've transferred high-res snaps onto the One SV than its 480x800 display won't really do them justice if you fancy showing them off to people as colours can appear weak and detail not overly crisp.
You can easily share media stored in the gallery with the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Picasa, while various messaging options including text and email are also present.
There are some basic editing tools incorporated in the gallery app on the One SV, allowing you to crop and rotate your photos as well as add some simple effects.
The 13 effects you have to choose from are not particularly ground breaking with options such as vintage and over exposed to pick from, but it's better than nothing and very simple to apply.
Battery life and connectivity
Battery life
The HTC One SV comes with a removable 1,800mAh battery which can be easily accessed by peeling off the plastic rear of the handset.
It's a pretty decent size especially when you consider the screen isn't overly taxing and the fact the One SV is packing a dual-core not quad-core processor.
The size translates into life quite nicely with the One SV easily seeing out a whole day even with moderately high usage which included phone calls, texts, web browsing, several Twitter and Facebook updates, camera action and a couple of YouTube videos.
If you're more frugal with your usage you'll make the battery last even longer and we were able to squeeze out just over two days doing the bare minimum on the One SV.
Obviously if you whack the screen on full brightness and run a video for hours on end the battery life will start to suffer and you'll be reaching for the charger before the day is out, but for general use the HTC One SV is sufficient.
Connectivity
We've already touched on the fact that the HTC One SV rocks up with 4G connectivity, it makes a pretty big deal of it on its rear declaring "4G LTE" for all to see.
Of course the One SV doesn't stop there though, all the usual suspects are present and correct including Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and A-GPS making sure you have all the core connectivity options at your fingertips.
You can turn the HTC One SV into a Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing devices such as your laptop and tablet to use your mobile data connection which is super speedy if you're in a 4G area.
Make sure you keep a tab on your usage though as you may see your data allowance drained in a matter of minutes if you get too carried away, so we advise you use this feature sparingly - if at all.
Unlike in the HTC One S, the One SV has been deemed suitable for NFC technology allowing you to transfer content with a tap between other similarly enabled handsets, such as the One X.
If you fancy connecting your One SV to your PS3 or smart TV the handset is also DLNA compatible, allowing you to easily stream video and audio as well share photos on a bigger screen.
Maps and Apps
Maps
As the HTC One SV is an Android device it comes fully equipped with the excellent Google Maps and Navigation applications, ensuring you can always find your way home. The One SV managed to locate us almost immediately after clicking on the maps app, and that was with Wi-Fi turned off.
It did take a few seconds to narrow down our location, but we were very impressed with the speed in which the phone managed to triangulate our whereabouts.
Maps loaded swiftly over 4G and we were able to pan around smoothly without any sign of hesitation or lag, which made the mapping experience an enjoyable one.
Detail isn't as pin sharp as on other handsets boasting higher resolutions so from a relatively zoomed out view on a busy area of the map it can look a little messy, but zoom in and everything becomes clearer.
The 4.3-inch display is a good size if you are planning on using the One SV as a in-car sat nav, with it clearly showing all the information you need without taking up too much of your windscreen.
The One SV was able to keep locked on our position even in busy built up areas and the clear instructions helped us to our destination in no time at all.
Apps
We've already covered the various social, media and mapping applications which come pre-installed on the HTC One SV, but that's not all.
HTC has handily pre-loaded the SV with a handful of other applications it thinks will help you in your day to day life, and if they don't then you always have access to Google Play which offers hundreds of thousands of apps for your delectation.
First up on the bundled app parade is the ultimately useless EA Games offering which is nothing more a link to five games, four of which are only trials – you'll be better off checking out the games section in Google Play.
An HTC staple is the Flashlight app, allowing you to utilise the LED on the back of the One SV and use it as a torch – perfect for when you're stumbling home at 2am and need to see where you're stepping.
Be warned though the flashlight will drain the battery quite significantly if you use it for too long.
Another HTC favourite is the mirror app which allows you to check out your fine self by using the front facing camera. It's not an app we found ourselves using, but we sure it's a life saver if some eye liner needs to be applied at a moments notice.
Polaris Office, PDF viewer and Notes are all on board to aid working on the go, plus the basic News and Weather app keeps you up to date with the main headlines and wind chill factor.
Thanks to the dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM inside the HTC One SV games run smoothly on the handset.
We were able to play the rather graphically intensive Temple Run on the One SV without issue, although the game didn't look as good as it does on other handsets with colours a little washed out and detail not as crisp.
Hands on gallery
Official gallery
Verdict
The HTC One SV probably should have offered more than it does. It drew us in with its promise of 4G connectivity and a name which resembled the great One S, but we ended up feeling a bit disappointed.We liked
The main selling point for the HTC One SV is its 4G capabilities and to be fair it handles this very well. Internet browsing speeds were impressive, app downloads swift and we could update Twitter and Facebook in a flash. It also performed well as a portable hotspot for our laptop as we hurtled along on a train. Battery life was another thing which impressed us and it's not very often we get to say that. The One SV happily lasted a day and with careful use we could stretch it to two before we had to start locating the charger.We disliked
The price. The HTC One SV costs the same as the One S which sports a better processor, screen, chassis and camera and although it may not be 4G enabled there's an awful lot of compromise for little gain here. It's disappointing to see a smartphone launching now which is still running Ice Cream Sandwich, as Jelly Bean has been established for a while and HTC has already launched a handset which runs Android 4.1 out the box – the One X+.Verdict
We can't help but think the HTC One SV has been rushed out to capitalise on the 4G rollout which is picking up speed in Europe and this phone is looking to cash in on those desperate to have the latest technology. That's not to say the One SV is a bad handset – if HTC had priced it closer to the One V instead of the One S then it would be a very different proposition, unfortunately it's not and that's the main issue we have. It's good to see another proper mid-range handset enter the 4G fray, but the Taiwanese firm has got its sums wrong on this occasion and ultimately that's going to make the HTC One SV a difficult one to shift. Thanks to unlocked-mobiles.com for sending us a HTC One SV to review and to EE for supplying us with a 4G sim.
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In Depth: The future of iPhone: how Apple's handset could evolve
When the iPhone launched, the world of mobile phone technology started changing immediately. Smartphones were the domain of high-powered businessmen and arch gadget lovers at the time, in part because of price, in part because their utilitarian looks and confusing interfaces didn't appeal to many who didn't need their advanced features.
But the iPhone managed to merge the power of smartphones with the universal, easy-to-understand interface and attractive design that most people want from a phone.
Here in 2013, the iPhone offers hundreds of thousands of apps that make just about any task user-friendly, and has some of the most advanced technology on the market. But it's important to remember that it didn't happen overnight.
There was no App Store until a year after the iPhone launched, and certainly no Retina display. And it's amazing to think that the iPhone 5 has 4G mobile broadband, while the original in 2007 didn't even have 3G.
In just five years, Apple's iPhone has become almost unrecognisable when it comes to the technology that sits inside it, and even the outside features some incredible enhancements, despite looking a lot like the original. And now that mobile technology is the most prominent area of research and development for many companies, we are now only going to see the pace increase from now on.
But what does this mean for the future of the iPhone? Incredible leaps like the inclusion of Multi-Touch don't come around very often, but there are other ways that the iPhone will improve over time. Small advances in areas that seem boring add up to making each new iPhone the best yet, but there are still blockbusting features that just aren't ready yet, here in 2012.
The important thing is that these developments aren't just science fiction: it's nearly all technology that's being finalised, or is being actively researched and developed. Some of the time predictions might prove to be ambitious, or technologies might arrive quicker than anticipated, but it all has potential to be real.
And though we're only talking about the iPhone here and not the iPad - the technology used in them is very similar, so just about all of these developments will improve both devices. So join us in the Tap! Time Machine as we travel to see the iPhone as it will appear a few years down the line with technology that's coming about right now, and we'll also fire off into the near-distant future, looking at how the next few decades will shape and change Apple's devices.
2014 - iPhone 6
1. New camera technology
Early in its life, the iPhone was always on the back foot when it came to the camera. Apple only really got serious about it with the iPhone 4, and now it's one of the most talked-about features in each iteration. Though the iPhone 5 mostly made behind-the-scenes tweaks, such as better image processing, future iPhones will be able to go further. Sony is known to have supplied Apple's sensors in the past, and in 2013 it will release a new image sensor that packs 13 megapixels into a tiny space without compromising image quality, thanks to a new way of designing the sensor. In fact, it should bring much-improved low-light shooting, because it can capture white pixels as well as red, green and blue. This means future iPhones would also be able to offer HDR recording, for getting maximum detail from videos. There are other advances in phone cameras, too. Nokia's PureView 808 phone uses a huge 41-megapixel sensor to take great images. The final photos are actually only eight megapixels - what the PureView does is use around five pixels on the sensor for each pixel in the eventual image, and average the colour from those five into the final one, ensuring that it's as accurate as possible. The downside is that image sensors of that size are just too large to include in something as thin as the iPhone.2. The development of 4G
By the time the iPhone 6 is released, 4G will have developed further than it has now, especially in the UK. For the launch of the iPhone 5, 4G was only available from one network, and in four cities (with more to come soon). By the end of 2013, all the major UK networks should be able to offer 4G connectivity, and the coverage will be up to 70% of the UK. At the moment, EE (also known as Everything Everywhere - the parent company of Orange and T-Mobile) is the only 4G operator, and it has launched this network on the 1800MHz band in the wireless spectrum. Other operators will have to bid for different parts of the spectrum to launch their own 4G services (except for Three, which will use EE's). Why is this important? Because the iPhone 5 only supports the 1800MHz band - not the others that will be used in the future. This means that if you buy an iPhone 5, it can only be used for 4G on EE and Three's networks in the UK, even after 2013. We expect that the next iPhone will offer a much wider range of operating bands as the technology that powers it grows. It's likely that it will work on any 4G network in the UK without problem, much as the iPhone 4, 4S and 5 do on 3G networks. In the US, there are two different wireless technologies, but it's possible that Apple will even be able to offer a single phone that even works on both of those network types as well.3. Wi-Fi 802.11ac
Though Apple drastically improved the maximum Wi-Fi connection speeds in the iPhone 5 compared to even just the 4S, the change came about just as the next generation of Wi-Fi technology is being introduced. Its already possible to buy wireless 'AC' (as it's known) routers, and when the technology is integrated into phones and tablets with the kind of technology Apple uses, it's expected to offer local network connection speeds of over 500Mbps - much faster than what's possible now. The fact that pretty much nobody has a home internet connection fast enough to make full use of this speed might make it seem a little pointless, but there are other purposes beyond surfing the web. It'll mean much higher quality and more reliable video streaming over AirPlay, for example, making playing mirrored games much smoother. Perhaps most importantly, it will allow for extremely fast wireless data syncing with iTunes - much faster than the new Lightning connector is capable of, for example. If Apple is to ever lose a physical plug connector completely, the high connection speeds of wireless AC will be important for media lovers.4. NFC
Near-field communication (NFC) is a very short-range wireless technology, designed to make it simple to transfer small amounts of information very quickly and easily. This has made it ideal for use in 'contactless' payment systems - think along the lines of the London Underground's Oyster Cards, where you need only tap a card on a pad to pay the correct amount. But it's not just about payments - because it can send and receive information in just one tap of your phone, it's great for any ticketing system, so could be used to get into concerts, on the train or even to speed things up in the airport. And when used for payments, it can send your payment information and receive your receipt and any vouchers in the same single tap. So far, Apple has said that Passbook in iOS does the same things as NFC, but that's not totally accurate. Passbook stores the information, and gets it ready for you when you arrive, but it can only communicate with other equipment by showing a QR code. This means it can only send information, not receive it - but having Passbook and NFC working as one package will offer a great level of flexibility. NFC has other practical uses as well. It can be used to access a Wi-Fi router instead of a lengthy password, for example, or to pair Bluetooth devices. Like the best new technologies, it has the potential to make life a little simpler, which of course, makes it a natural fit for the iPhone.5. Secure payment
In the last decade, Apple has spread into all sorts of areas people wouldn't once have expected to see it in. Movies, music, phones… and with the company frequently touting the high number of iTunes accounts with a credit card stored, how long will it be before it gets into online payments? Think about how much simpler it would be if buying anything online was as easy as buying music or apps on your iOS device - just choose the item and type in your password. Because you'd still need a payment card behind your iTunes account, it wouldn't so much be a competitor to the likes of Visa and Mastercard as it would to PayPal and Google Checkout. Apple wouldn't be able to take a cut of the transactions anywhere near as high as its 30% on apps and music, but it wouldn't need to, since each payment would require almost no effort from them. We're already seeing the seeds of this idea in the EasyPay system in the Apple Store app. You can go into Apple Stores and pay for physical items by scanning them into the app and entering the password for your Apple ID. As Apple continues to expand its server reliability and security, we're sure that in future years Apple will start expanding the number of places this service is offered.6. Making Siri psychic
Siri continues to develop, with more searchable data being added and speech recognition being improved, but it has to be invoked to work - you have to bring Siri up and ask it what you want. To be a truly useful virtual assistant, rather than a voice-command tool, it should anticipate your needs before you even know you need them. Google recently launched Google Now, which is a service very much along these lines. The idea is that you often want to know certain information at certain times or places, and your 'assistant' should be able to predict that. First thing in the morning, you want to know the weather for the day. Just before the time you usually leave for work, you want to know about traffic problems or train delays. At 5pm on a Saturday, you probably want to know the football results. These examples are all of frequent activities, but it can also help with more unusual things you have scheduled. Google Now doesn't just remind you when you've got an appointment, for example, but will also instantly bring up full directions for getting there, too. Passbook already does something similar by pulling live information into its entries - such as which gate you need to head to at the airport for your flight - but it's something that could be integrated into Siri and the Notification Center for really giving you instant information.7. Storage improvements
We had been hoping that the iPhone 5 announcement would be the day that we finally saw a 128GB iPhone, but it remains beyond our grasp. More than that, the pitiful 8GB of storage in the iPhone 4 will be a real struggle to get by with if you want to download a lot of Universal apps, take lots of photos and video, and keep a good music collection on your phone (or even just two of those things). The good news, then, is that Intel and Micron have jointly announced a new breed of flash memory chips that can fit 128GB into a single, fingernail-tip sized package. For devices where space is at a premium, including more than one flash memory chip (as would be necessary currently) might just take up too much room - especially in light of Apple's continuing quest to make its phones as thin as possible. And the new design isn't just smaller; it's much faster, too. Intel says it should offer twice the performance of the previous designs, meaning that apps will install faster and games will load quicker when they open. Intel and Micron's new chips should already be entering mass production, and so will be available for future versions of the iPhone.2016 - iPhone 7
1. Gesture and face recognition
Google recently introduced a 'face unlock' feature into Android, where rather than swiping or typing in a code to unlock your phone securely, it uses face detection to see if you're you, and unlocks accordingly. Similarly, Google owns a patent on using face detection as a method of switching users on a device - so if you're using an iPad, say, it might show a different set of apps and settings to if someone else was. These technologies are somewhat imperfect at the moment, but they're exactly the kind of seamless simplicity Apple aims for in the iPhone. It might not be unlocking that the technology ends up in, though - it's possible that the iPhone could use your expression to determine if it's selecting the right option in autocorrect, for example - an involuntary frown from you, and it knows you didn't want to change 'were' to 'we're'. Gesture control is an area that's come on hugely since Microsoft launched its Xbox Kinect controller, but it's still imperfect. With improved camera technology, it could be much more accurate and fine-grained, and again could be useful for the iPhone and iPad. A wave of your hand towards your phone could invoke Siri from a distance, for example, or there might be hand gestures for playback controls on a video, so you could pause it without having to to be within touching distance of your device.2. 3D
Whether 3D technology ever makes it into the iPhone might depend on whether it continues to take off for movies and TV shows, and so whether Apple feels compelled to add it to the iTunes Store. If it does, you can be sure that it'll want a flagship device to show off the 3D imagery, and the iPhone is an ideal fit. Because it's a device only one person uses, it can use technology similar to Nintendo's 3DS to let you see 3D without glasses. The way the 3DS works is to add a filter layer over the screen, which angles the direction of light from the pixels ever so slightly, directing half to the left eye and half to the right. Improvements to the 3DS's technology in the short time since it was released mean that the 3DS XL model has a much larger 'sweet spot' than the original - that is, the area where you can hold your head to see the 3D effect fully is much more generous. This will become better still over time, and head-tracking could also help to keep the effect clean. Of course, we've no doubt that Apple would allow you turn the 3D off, as you can on the 3DS. Adding a 3D screen wouldn't be the end of it, either; we'd expect to see a pair of high-quality cameras on the back of the screen for recording 3D movies, and two cameras on the front, for 3D FaceTime calls.3. A more advanced screen
Apple has never been slow when it comes to adopting advanced screen technology, bringing in Retina displays on the iPhone and iPad well before its competitors were able to offer anything similar. But resolution is only half the battle - the new iPad's colour range and accuracy were just as important as its high resolution, while the iPhone 5's improved colour reproduction makes almost as big a difference as its added height. For several years, OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) screens have been touted as the next big thing. A few issues - including difficulty in producing enough to fill demand - have held them back, but they've made a big impact in some Android phones. The important thing about them is that they don't require a backlight, unlike an LCD display currently used in the iPhone. This means they can be a good deal thinner, providing Apple with another way to reduce the size of the iPhone. They also produce much deeper blacks than LCD screens, adding depth to movies. There's also anti-reflective technology to consider, making the iPhone easier to use outdoors. One kind of technology mimics the eyeballs of moths, using hexagons that are just nanometres in size to change the way light hits materials. Plus, improved construction processes and materials might make an edge-to-edge display possible in the future, reducing the width of the iPhone and letting it shed more weight.4. Wireless charging
Apple's Phil Schiller was asked just after the iPhone 5 launch why it didn't include wireless charging capabilities, something that competitor Palm was offering back in 2009. Schiller said that wireless systems aren't that convenient, because you still need to plug a charging device into a wall, or another source of power. He suggested the humble USB cable was far more convenient. There's no reason these two should be mutually exclusive, though, and we suspect that Apple will introduce wireless charging as soon as it thinks the technology is viable. Inductive wireless charging works by using an electromagnetic field to transfer power from a charging station to an induction coil in the device that needs to be powered. Basically, you pop your phone on a pad that's plugged into a power socket, and it immediately starts charging. You can have larger pads that charge more than one device at a time, and you could have them dotted around the house. At the moment, they suffer from poor efficiency compared to a cable - transferring around 70% of the power they consume, though this can be improved with higher-quality parts (which we'd expect from Apple). There's a wireless charging standard called Qi that many companies use, which has the advantage that any Qi-certified charging station and device will work with each other. We hope that Apple will go down this flexible route, but it might well create its own wireless charging solution.5. More advanced processors
For all of its impressive upgrade in terms of design, perhaps the iPhone 5's most ground-breaking addition is the A6 chip. Apple has been making its own branded processors for a few years, but they've been custom system-on-a-chip designs with fairly standard parts inside - Apple's been buying the same parts as everyone else, but putting them together into a package in its own way. But that all changed with the A6: for the first time, the actual CPU itself is a custom Apple design. The basis of the A6 is reportedly the same as the A5 in the 4S, but Apple was able to bring out huge performance increases by altering the exact specifications - but that's actually quite old technology. It's likely that Apple is already working on a tweaked version of the newer technology, which will offer even more headroom for big leaps in speed. It's not just the custom design that will benefit, though. Apple will be able to make the chips smaller than ever, built with a 22nm process instead of the current 32nm. This essentially means you make the same parts, but you make them smaller. You might think this would make them more expensive, but it actually works out cheaper because you use less material, and it makes them significantly more power efficient.6. Developing iOS
As the iPhone becomes much more powerful, we'd expect iOS to grow and take advantage of what the hardware can do. We'd still expect apps to be at the core of everything you do in iOS rather than the operating system itself, and there are plenty of steps Apple can take to allow developers to create even more powerful apps. The number of APIs available to developers will no doubt continue to grow, giving them more options for creating apps, and integrating Apple features. We hope to see more multitasking options; it may be that in a few years the iPad will have enough power to run apps concurrently in the same way that OS X does. We'd also expect to see better ways to manage your apps - if you have lots, it's tough to manage them. With Spotlight and Siri, it's not too difficult to find an app if you don't know where it is on your Home screens, but this isn't a substitute for good organisation. We also expect an API for Siri eventually, so that developers can allow it to access their apps, in much the way that it does for Reminders. We also hope that developers will be able to create Notification Center widgets like Apple's Weather widget. And though Apple continues to develop what web apps can do as an alternative to App Store apps, in the future we might see a feature like Gatekeeper on OS X, where you'd have the option of installing signed apps (meaning they've been verified by Apple) from outside the App Store.7. Better batteries
Lithium-ion batteries have been powering our rechargeable devices for a long time, and the technology behind them has proven to be reliable. But it's by no means the best solution for portable power, and we don't need to reinvent things too drastically to see improvement. There are two main possibilities for improving battery life, one of which involves making things very small. Nanowire batteries are a variant of current lithium-ion technology, using silicon nanowires in place of the graphite used in batteries at the moment. Silicon contains up to 10 times more lithium than graphite, so the energy density is increased, allowing for batteries with less mass. They should also be able to charge faster, due to a larger surface area. There are problems with the nanowires losing charge capacity over time, but solutions are being worked on. The other option is batteries that use oxygen to generate electricity. Metal-air batteries oxidise a metal and then reduce the oxygen to generate current - a constant supply of air is needed for them to work, but the energy density is extremely high, and they're lightweight. It's only now that the materials to build them are viable, the problem being the choice of metal. Lithium-air batteries offer the best energy density but are too delicate - problems occur if the battery's airflow gets humid – while zincair batteries offer good energy density, but struggle to retain capacity.2020 - iPhone 9
1. 5G
Yes, 4G's only just rolling out now, but then it took less than 10 years for the world to decide that 3G wasn't enough, and that 4G was absolutely, positively necessary. However, 5G won't be what you think. The 4G spec gives it an awful lot of headroom for growth - the initial speeds of a 50Mbps peak in practice and 100Mbps in theory will seem positively antiquated by later versions of the technology. Eventually, 4G LTE revisions could reach download speeds of up to 1Gbps. With that sort of bandwidth available, it just isn't necessary for 5G networks to be a big speed bump, like the moves from 2G to 3G, or 3G to 4G were. Instead 5G is intended to focus on improving the mobile internet experience in other ways. When 4G LTE handsets launched, they pretty much gave up on the idea of power efficiency in favour of high speeds. That's improving, and has already come on a long way in the iPhone 5, but getting the power usage as low as possible would be a focus for 5G development. Reducing the likelihood of outages, improving speeds in areas with less coverage, increasing capacity for having high numbers of simultaneous users (so you won't get network problems at big events, or at time like New Year's Eve) - basically, the current 5G research is looking at making the speeds of 4G as reliable and ubiquitous as possible.2. Liquidmetal casing
Apple has used various materials in its quest to build the perfect iPhone casing, from aluminium in the original, to plastic in the 3G/3GS, to glass in the 4/4S, and aluminium (again) in the iPhone 5. They've all suffered from practical flaws, even if they've all been improvements on each other. The aluminium back of the iPhone 5, for example, needs to have small glass sections for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas, because the metal would otherwise block them. But Apple has exclusive rights to a technology called Liquidmetal, which could solve many of the problems with case construction. For a start, it can be made in thin, complicated shapes easily while still providing strength; so as Apple keeps trimming millimetres off the iPhone, Liquidmetal offers a more flexible way to make the casing. It's also highly scratch-resistant and durable, helping to keep your iPhone in pristine condition even after a few years of brushing against your keys. And, perhaps most usefully, it can actually be used as the material for the iPhone's antennas, meaning they can be integrated into the casing even more efficiently than they are now. And it's even possible to finish Liquidmetal in different ways - it can be used to make shining metal casing, textured metal and more. One of Liquidmetal's inventors estimates that, in 2012, Apple is at least five years and several hundred million dollars away from being able to use Liquidmetal at this scale, but in the future it could offer exactly the kind of thin, strong casing needed.3. The future of Gorilla Glass
It's something of an open secret that Corning's Gorilla Glass is what keeps the front of the iPhone scratch-free. This treated glass is extremely resistant to small amounts of damage (it can still be shattered, mind), and the latest version of the technology reduces the thickness of the glass by around 20%, while being stronger than ever. Corning told us that it would continue looking to make its glass thinner while maintaining strength. The issue with going much thinner than it's made currently (0.5mm thick) is that the glass inevitably becomes more flexible as it gets thinner, and if it becomes too much so, it could bend and damage the screen underneath it if you applied too much pressure (by, for example, sitting on it). However, Corning still believes it can reduce the thickness of its glass down to around 0.3mm, and it will still be as tough. Corning also make substrate glass, which is the glass that the actual screens are built with, as opposed to the cover glass, which protects the screen. Corning's latest technology aims to produce substrates that are just 0.05mm thick, which is possible because they don't need to be tough like the cover glass - the composition can be different. Beyond that, Corning is looking into adding anti-smudge/fingerprint technology when it produces the glass, as well as coating to self-heal scratches and reduce glare to zero with impacting on screen quality.4. A more touching experience
Just before the launch of the iPad 3, there were rumours going around that Apple would include technology from a company called Senseg in its touchscreens that allowed for haptic feedback. Haptic feedback is essentially touch feedback, and it takes many forms. Some smartphones vibrate every time you hit a button or key on the touchscreen, in an attempt to replicate what you feel when you press a physical button. Senseg's technology is considerably more advanced, though. It uses electrical fields to actually recreate physical feeling on the touchscreen. So, if you were to run your finger along a row of keys on a keyboard, each one would actually feel as if it were physically there to your finger, even though the flat glass isn't changing at all. It can be used to replicate different textures, and to let you 'feel' objects on screen as you move them - one of Senseg's demos involved pushing a ball on-screen. How would this be used in iOS? While we doubt Apple would go to the trouble of offering you to feel the 'leather' in the Calendar app, you would be able to feel the switches in Settings move as you turn them off, feel the keyboard keys as you type, and it could provide a way for Braille readers to use the iPhone and iPad without any accessories needed. Developers might find it a lot of work to integrate - we're not sure how many of them will want to effectively design a physical product as well as a virtual one.5. Your iPhone becomes your computer
In the future, the idea of buying a Windows PC or a Mac might become a totally archaic thought. Though the processing power of the iPhone in a decade's time might well surpass the power of what's in the latest laptops now, we're actually not suggesting that your iPhone will simply plug into a screen to form the guts of a computer (though this is entirely possible). We're talking about virtualisation through the cloud. The technology already exists in 2012, being put to use in OnLive's cloud gaming service and OnLive Desktop offering. OnLive Desktop basically switches your home Windows PC for one that's in the cloud - running on a server owned by someone else. You move a mouse and type on a keyboard, those commands are sent to the server over the internet, and the video stream of the actions is sent back to your screen. With faster internet speeds available, you'd barely be able to notice any difference to using a PC under your desk. Apple has already taken the unexpected move of making OS X available for home virtualisation, so perhaps iCloud will house the operating system in the future. In fact, iCloud might well become the operating system - you could simply run virtualised versions of applications, with no need for an OS to contain them. And the iPhone would be more than powerful enough to power this, and stream the video to a larger screen over AirPlay.6. Siri is perfected
By this time, Siri will have had years to learn people's speech patterns, dialects and accents. It will be able to manage just about any online task for people all over the world. It will also be able to help reach all parts of your phone, and apps will be tied into it, allowing what it can do to be expanded almost infinitely. The important thing is that it will never make mistakes, and could even start to advise you on tone. If you dictate and email or text with an angry tone, it might suggest calming down and recomposing. If you sound happy, it could append a smiley face. Apple might even move the speech recognition from the cloud to your phone. This might seem backwards compared to the way everything else is going, but it has distinct advantages, and it's only in the future that the iPhone would have the computing power to correctly analyse speech. It means that if your internet connection goes down, you won't lose Siri's ability to perform actions on your iPhone (even if it can't do anything in the cloud), and it would make responses as fast as possible.7. Local storage becomes obsolete
Though there will no doubt be lots of advances in storage capacity over time, it's likely to become less and less necessary. Ubiquitous fast internet speeds will make music streaming an equivalent to storing it on your device, except that you'll have access to a library larger than you could ever hope to store yourself. Movies and TV shows won't need to be downloaded either - you'll be able to get instant 3D 4K (the heir apparent to 1080p HD) streams anywhere. On-demand content is likely to almost completely replace watching channels live, except in the case of special events. Physical media will just seem like a waste of space. Similarly, any documents you work on will just be saved to the cloud. This is already happening, but it will simply become the norm for everything in the future. Photos will be uploaded as they're taken, stored online for you to review from any device. Security shouldn't be a concern in the cloud - Siri could allow to even voice-authenticate access in a pinch - and backing up wouldn't be a problem, either. Even now, Dropbox saves previous versions of your documents, so they can't be lost or accidentally overwritten. We'd expect iCloud to offer the same options, just like Apple's OS X does on the Mac.2050 - iPhone 24
1. Rollable displays
The flat, solid displays that we're used to at the moment have come on hugely in the last few years, but they put a limit on the portability of devices - their size inevitably dictates the size of the device. Flexible, rollable displays give us more options in this area. It's possible, for example, to have an iPhone where the whole screen can disappear into another area, perhaps one the size of the bottom area of the current iPhone, where the Home button sits. It would make it incredibly small to carry around, and when you want to use it, you just pop out the screen. There's a material in development called nanocrystalline cellulose, which is transparent, incredibly strong for its weight, flexible and conducts electricity. This means that not only can it survive the rigours of being rolled in and out all day, but it can also power a display of OLED pixels on its surface. We've already seen that OLEDs require no backlight, and so can be a part of displays that are only a fraction of a millimetre thick. In addition, nanocrystalline cellulose will also be very cheap to make, because it's derived from wood pulp.2. See-through screen
With phones and other devices likely to only continue flooding us with information, context is vitally important. There's no better context than being able to see information applied directly to what it's describing, which is why augmented reality is incredibly useful. There are already some AR apps around in the App Store, such as map apps that point you in the direction of restaurants when you hold your phone up to point the camera around at eye height. But it can be much more than that. Imagine a phone with a clear screen, that could overlay information about whatever's behind it. Hold it over a gadget and it would bring up specifications and purchase options. Hold it in front of a person and it overlays social network updates. It's much more seamless than what's available now, and interactive - there's no waiting for the camera to focus on the one thing that app's designed to analyse - you just hold the phone up and it fills with information, identifying what's behind it. Our old friends OLED and nanocrystalline cellulose crop up again, here. Samsung has already shown off a transparent display based on OLED technology, so the technology is eminently achievable, but having a durable, flexible material to use will be hugely important. Like we said, nanocrystalline cellulose is actually transparent, on top of its many other virtues, so it ideal for this sort of application.3. It's all in the eyes
Google's Glasses device is essentially a pair of glasses that records everything that happens, and displays information on the lenses, in front of your eyes. At the moment, they're inelegant headsets with a bulky battery, but some of the technology we've seen here could make them much more appealing - essentially, they could work in a pair of contact lenses instead of glasses. With a low-enough energy draw, they could be powered by the heat of your eye, using graphene technology. They could record on tiny camera optics, and transmit what they see wirelessly to your iPhone, using carbon nanotube antennae that are microscopic in size. OLED pixels on them could display augmented reality information - the US military is already working on technology that lets you focus on things that are close up and far away at the same time, so the information would still be clear, even as you're looking at something in the distance. The hub for all this would be your phone, receiving imagery from the contacts, and sending information to them. The iPhone itself can also use your eyes in more innovative ways, tracking where you're looking to adjust options, or even letting you control it with just your eyes. You could type, for example, simply by looking at the letters you want on the keyboard.4. Eternal power
Better charging solutions are all very well, but in the future, wouldn't it be better if you never had to make a point of charging your iPhone at all? Advances in battery technology could allow for an iPhone that essentially powers itself. A battery that uses graphene (the same material that carbon nanotubes are made from) has been proposed and experimented with that uses thermal energy to generate electricity - that is, it's powered by heat. So by placing the battery next to the warm computer components it's powering, it can get some energy back. Now, we're not suggesting that the laws of physics will have changed in a few decades and this will generate perpetual energy - the battery will also need energy from elsewhere to stay topped up. But that could be just about anything: your body heat when it's in your pocket; heat from your hand when you hold it; solar thermal heat. All these things would just provide power passively, without you ever needing to think about intentionally charging it, and the power consumption of the parts in the future will be so small compared to today that it might be able to always run without any intentional power input.5. Siri becomes truly intelligent
Though Siri is cleverly designed to be occasionally witty and appear smart in its knowledge, it's still really quite constrained. Push it past its pre-loaded instruction sets and you're likely to receive plaintive apology and an offer of a web search. And though Siri can 'learn' at the moment, it's just learning certain new connections about you, all still within the constraints of what it can do. As much more processing power becomes available to Apple, we could see Siri advance into some much smarter - something with true intelligence. IBM is already looking at ways to bring its Watson intelligent supercomputer (which was able to beat human contestants at the gameshow Jeopardy) to smartphones, but we're talking about creations even beyond that. Future versions of these AIs could learn the things you like in a passive and genuinely constructive way, being able to recommend some things and discard others based on what it knows about you. If you ask it something it doesn't know, it could perform research online in just a matter of moments, reading and collating information and giving you what you need to know. We're not suggesting it needs to go as far as having distinct personality and pulling us into a Blade Runner situation, but there's a lot of scope for Siri to learn and know things more naturally, instead of within our confines.6. The Tricorder
While the iPad made us think of the tablet computers they use in later series of Star Trek, it might well be that future versions of the iPhone make us think of the Tricorder, the general-purpose scanning and analysis device carried by the crew of the Enterprise. NASA has been looking into devices that can easily monitor the health of astronauts in space, and diagnose any problems that arise, while the X Prize Foundation is offering $10 million if a team can create a device that can diagnose illnesses. There are various technologies that will help to bring these forwards, such as graphene-based DNA analysers. It's not just medical applications, though. By combining an array of sensors, from pressure sensors to ultrasonic distance detectors to spectroscopy, the iPhone could receive a huge amount of information about the world. It could be its own on-board weather station, warning you of impending rain; it could identify if there are dangerous gases nearby; it could even help you find flaws with buildings. Want to know if certain water is safe to drink? Just point your iPhone at it. Electronics will become so small that it should be possible to fit in dozens of sensors, ensuring that you'll know as much as possible about the world around you.7. More advance build materials
When looking for a way to make devices as thin and light as possible, manufacturers will have to go beyond the traditional materials we're using now. Even the likes of Liquidmetal might not offer the strength and flexibility necessary. Nanostructures might become necessary for building materials strong enough and light enough for future devices. The most prevalent of these is carbon nanotubes, which are formed taking a sheet of carbon that's one atom thick, known as graphene, and forming it into a tube. Carbon nanotubes have proven to be something of a wonder material - they're among the strongest and stiffest materials ever discovered, and could be even harder than diamonds. There are all sorts of proposed uses for them, including stopping bullets (better than kevlar would), as a way to build an elevator into space (really), and for the construction of future iPhones? Considering how versatile they are, it might come as no surprise if we tell you that carbon nanotubes even make a good antenna, but at a tiny fraction of the weight of a regular antenna (one ten-thousandth the weight of a copper one, for example). So, like the materials used in the iPhone today, carbon nanotubes could combine being a case and antenna for a future iPhone, while being almost impossibly light and small.Generation i
In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone as the first successful Multi-Touch device. The iPad followed three years later, and the two have come to represent as big a change in computing as the graphical user interface was 30 years beforehand. In both cases, the way of interacting was criticised by those used to the old method. Productivity is the word most often trotted out, with claims that a graphical interface didn't give you the power of the command line abounding in 1984, and claims that a touchscreen doesn't give you the precision of a mouse pointer. The problem with these claims is that they so often confuse familiarity with necessity, and a lack of imagination with advancement. The graphical interface has provided the kinds of productivity tools that couldn't have been dreamed of in a command line world, and a future dominated by touch gives us another opportunity to rethink how we create software, and what the best way to create things or just have fun and connect with the world is. If this sounds far-fetched to you, just look at households with both children and iPads. Kids that are far too young to comprehend the metaphor of mouse-based interfaces – controlling a pointer that represents your hand - can instantly pick up the far more literal interaction of the iPad, where your hand is your hand. Things move how they expect to move when they drag them. Buttons react like real buttons. It's only adults who find touch controls to be inadequate compared to the mouse and keyboard, in many cases because they can't yet get software for iOS that matches the desktop equivalent. It's a totally legitimate complaint, but it's one that's based on immediacy - you can't replace your PC with an iPad for all tasks now. But the software will improve. By the time kids have developed the finger dexterity and comprehension necessary to use a mouse, why would they want to? Games are available on the iPad. The iPad is a more immediate research tool than a computer - it's usually to hand wherever you want to find something out, rather than tucked away in another room. Basic word processing will have better controls in iOS in the future than it does now. The likes of Brushes offer a more natural canvas for doodling than Microsoft Paint ever did, while being easier to use. Children will start using computers regularly without needing to use a mouse, so when they do need to use more complex software, the interface will change with them. In most cases, the tools are already on iOS, they're just not as comprehensive as their more mature desktop counterparts at the moment. But touchscreens, voice interaction and gesture controls offer a wide scope to make our software work for us, in the ways humans like to work, instead of us having to conform to computer guidelines. As that changes, and natural interfaces develop into something as comprehensive as mouse-based interfaces, there'll still be no compelling reason to start using a mouse (except for a few fringe cases, perhaps). Advanced image editing, computer programming, design, spreadsheet and database management… these are all possible on the iPad now, and we are already witnessing them get better and more comprehensive over time. And it's not just the mouse. Children used to the iPhone tend to try to swipe through photos on a digital camera, or expect television to be an interactive choice, instead of a linear experience. The death of the old ways of interacting won't come from some overnight decision that new interfaces are now good enough for the world to use for everything, but from obsolescence over time. The disconnection between our hands and the action we're performing will seem needless and archaic to the generation about to start using computers. Right now, the iPad might be something you use in addition to a desktop PC, but we might be the last generation for whom that's true. Our children might never use a mouse at all.
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Tutorial: How to win at Osmos: beat the physics-based puzzle game
Osmos resembles abstract warfare at a microscopic and - later - galactic scale. You control a glowing orb called a 'mote', propelled by ejecting matter - tap and a small amount of matter is expelled, the mote moving in the opposite direction.
The aim is absorption: ingesting motes smaller than yours. Osmos is beautiful, immersive and engaging, but its unique nature makes it tricky to beat.
This How To Win provides you with the skills to survive and dominate each type of Osmos arena, along with besting your friends in the new multiplayer mode.
Getting started
The first minute of Osmos is tougher than the next half hour, because you must flick a mental switch in your mind and understand the propulsion technique. Inertia plays a big role, and players often tap too much, move too quickly, lose control, and cannot easily recover. Instead, tap sparingly, and learn how to start, stop and subtly change direction during the early tutorial levels.
There are no scores nor any time limits, so be patient. Think of Osmos like a game where you've limited ammunition. Don't 'fire' a lot, or you'll run out of ammo and lose. Also, fully immerse yourself for best results: sit comfortably and listen to the music. Those who play without it, not getting into the right mood, tend to be more impatient.
Where possible, play on the iPad, which is more forgiving if you're off by a short distance when tapping.
Let's do the time warp
Early Osmos levels are concerned only with movement and absorption, but time warping is soon introduced. Left/right flicks and drags slow/speed up time, respectively, enabling player-controlled difficulty adjustments. Slowing down time can give you breathing space to think and complete a level at your own pace; as noted, there are no penalties for dallying - Osmos is structured more like a puzzle game, but with an arcade feeling. However, slowing time can be a double-edged sword. Do so on levels that are slow-moving and you'll find it hard to get a sense of the trajectories of on-screen elements. You may also find the game less intuitive, with the 'engine response' of your mote becoming quite sluggish. Therefore, find a sweet spot - a level where you're comfortable with the controls and still get a sense of movement from the motes; and don't be afraid to frequently adjust time, including speeding it up when travelling a long distance when there are no nearby threats to your mote's survival.Mastering the Odyssey
Initially, the only solo mode unlocked in Osmos is Odyssey, a 'guided tour' through arena types. It's recommended you complete this before tackling arena-specific level sets in Arcade. However, the last few levels in Odyssey are tough, and so the Osmos developers provided an 'out', unlocking Arcade's Ambient, Antimatter and Impasse levels on completing the 'Floating' stage within Odyssey, and the Sentient and Repulsor levels on completing 'The Chase'. Sometimes, patience, planning, and a firm grasp of Osmos mechanics relating to propulsion and time-warping will see you through levels, but there are specific methods for tackling tougher levels in each arena type…Ambient
This is 'vanilla' Osmos. To win, simply master movement skills and be precise. Time-warping can help.
First, slow time, assess the situation, and pick a mote to absorb. Next, return to regular speed and get a feeling for relative velocities. Tap to shift your mote to an interception path, and speed time back up until close. Slow time down again, zoom, make precise adjustments, absorb and repeat.
Antimatter
These levels introduce dark antimatter motes. They grow when absorbing other antimatter motes but contract when absorbing a standard mote.
Approach these arenas like Ambient ones, but be more patient. Often, if you survive and wait around for matter and antimatter to collide, you can win by doing very little. (By contrast, waiting around in an Ambient arena can result in defeat through chain reactions causing other motes to become far bigger than yours.)
Impasse
These arenas typically start out static and tightly packed. The main tip is 'push and swoop'. If you can't absorb anything around you, use ejected matter to push a mote into a larger one. Wait until it starts being absorbed. As it becomes smaller than your mote, jump in and steal the rest of the snack.
Don't be afraid of Impasse arenas with antimatter - chain reactions are less problematic there, buying you space to move and ensuring motes don't grow out of control.
Repulsor
The number-one tip here is to slow down time. Repulsors repel motes around them, but attract each other. Therefore, you have to plan your route around them, snapping up smaller motes, and then, when demanded, absorbing the Repulsors as well. If your mote manages to grow to gargantuan size, speed up time and wait until the Repulsors merge into one giant before consuming it.
Sentient
These arenas have motes with intelligence. Those in early levels aren't too bright, but AI motes soon become vicious. However, they operate at a particular game speed and have certain thresholds for acceleration, and so slow down time to give you space to think and provide you with more relative dexterity. Also, AI motes only see individual targets. They won't spot clusters of edible motes more beneficial than a nearby lone one.
Solar
These levels introduce Attractors, making motes move in curved paths and creating arenas akin to solar systems. The difficulty is that people are used to things moving in straight lines, and curved paths are harder to predict.
A common error is tapping too much, thereby speeding up and leaving the solar system, or slowing down and colliding with the sun-like Attractor. Be patient, and look for opportunities where a tap or two will move you into an intersecting curved trajectory with another mote, and then repeat. Remember you can speed up time if gradually catching a target mote over several orbits.
Also master the Hohmann transfer, an orbital mechanics technique, which provides the most efficient way to increase your orbit: speed up a little by tapping directly ahead on your orbit, and then do so again at the far point.
Epicycles
Essentially 'Solar plus', Epicycles arenas have central Attractors akin to suns, planet-like orbiting outer Attractors, and motes orbiting them. Rather than moving in an ellipse, you travel in a 'corkscrew' pattern, orbiting the nearest planet.
Success depends on thinking in terms of repeating orbits around your planet and in respect to the sun. Behaviour around planets works roughly like a small Solar level, and you should consume other motes there first, before travelling elsewhere.
Moving between planets is the tricky bit - speed up at extreme points (closest to or farthest from the sun) and watch how the orbit prediction path displays how you'll move out of orbit.
Once free of a planet, keep correcting your course to collide with another, and then correct again to attain a stable orbit. In later levels, you must absorb outer Attractors and the central one, which is truly difficult - best for those readers who've taken a course in spacecraft dynamics!
Warped Chaos
In these arenas, there are Attractors but no orbits. Attractors suck up everything around, and the pace can be fast. You must rapidly plan how to work your way up the food chain. In a sense, it's like an Ambient level, but with Attractors.
Timewarping can help, and you should plan to grab simple motes first, to curtail Attractor growth. Also note Attractors repel each other, and so once all simple motes are gone, Warped Chaos becomes a slow curved-path billiards game of sorts, where you can plan paths to smaller Attractors (including 'bank shots' off the walls), before finally tackling the largest.
Multiplayer motes
New in the latest version of Osmos, multiplayer enables you to connect locally or online and battle other players for mote supremacy. The object is most often to absorb your opponent's mote, and this plays out like a Sentient level with humans gunning for each other rather than battling AI motes.
But other arenas provide variety, such as Solar and Epicycles. These demand you absorb the Attractor to win - a kind of 'capture the flag' on a galactic level. There's no time-warping in multiplayer and people react differently from AI motes. It pays to be patient and wait for opportunities.
Early on in the game, grab as many motes as you can, and then wait for a good set of trajectories for intercepting your foe. There's no point in lunging at your opponent, because your mote will expel loads of mass, potentially be dodged, and will then be eaten.
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Facebook for Android update adds faster photo loads, voice messaging
Facebook has updated its native app for Android, bringing a couple of new features and improvements to the photo viewing experience.
The social network claims that photos will load faster in the new version of the app, launched on Friday, so depending on your device and connection speed, you should see a boost.
The Facebook 2.1 update, available from the Google Play store now, will also allow Android users to send voice messages, a feature previously limited to the Facebook Messenger app.
Finally, the update expands options for sharing content. As well as posting updates to their own Timeline, users can now share to Groups, friends' Timelines and to Pages they have Liked.
Going native
The update follows the last major update, just over a month ago, which rebooted the app with Facebook's own native code, bringing much faster performance than its HTML5-based predecessor. The company has promised to update its mobile apps every 4-8 weeks as it seeks to capitalise on the ever-growing number of users doing most of their browsing through smartphones and tablets.
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Sky Go Extra download service to launch this week
Sky has confirmed that it will launch a new download service to allow subscribers to watch content offline on their smartphones and tablets.
The Sky Go Extra platform builds on the massively-successful Sky Go live streaming app and will offer unlimited downloads of popular movies and TV shows on to portable devices.
For £5 extra a month, existing Sky subscribers can download as much as their device will hold and each download will last for a month before expiring.
Up to four users per subscription will be able to make use of the service.
The broadcaster is also offering a two-month free trial to all subscribers in the hope of luring them away from the on-demand Netflix and Lovefilm platforms.
New movies wherever you roam
Sky's almighty array of new movies, which far outstrips any other UK provider's, will make Sky Go Extra an enticing prospect for subscribers who don't get much time to sit down in front of their TV sets. Sky's Brand Director for TV products Luke Bradley-Jones said: "The way customers are thinking about the whole TV experience is changing again and it's ultimately all about the content - however people want to watch it." The launch will make the complete Sky Go package much more iPlayer-like, with the ability to both stream live and download content for viewing at a later time on mobile devices.
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Google Glass may feature laser-projected virtual keyboard
Google's Project Glass AR specs could be fitted with a laser-projected virtual keyboard, which would allow users to input information by tapping their arm or hand.
In a patent filing published this week, Google explained how a virtual keyboard could be used to control the Augmented Reality glasses, expected to go public in 2014.
Within the patent, entitled "Methods and Systems for a Virtual Input Device," Google said that the camera and a projector could be used in tandem to facilitate data input on any surface, not just the user's hand.
In the example given, the tiny projector would sit on the arm of the glasses, while the device's camera would be used to interpret the finger strokes and relay that information back to the CPU.
Virtual input device
The filing, initially made in June last year, reads: "In one example, the virtual input device includes a projector and a camera. The projector projects a pattern onto a surface. "The camera captures images that can be interpreted by a processor to determine actions. The projector may be mounted on an arm of a pair of eyeglasses and the camera may be mounted on an opposite arm of the eyeglasses. "A pattern for a virtual input device can be projected onto a 'display hand' of a user, and the camera may be able to detect when the user uses an opposite hand to select items of the virtual input device." The filing also shows how various types of virtual keyboard could be projected onto the surface. In certain circumstances, a full QWERTY keyboard would be employed, while a numeric keypad appears in others. As neat as the feature may sound, it's by no means a dead cert to appear within the AR specs. Google is known to be experimenting with all kinds of solutions, for its long-awaited wearable computer.
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5.8-inch Samsung Galaxy Fonblet set for European launch?
Samsung is reportedly preparing to launch a 5.8-inch smartphone called the Galaxy Fonblet.
The SamMobile site reckons that the device is similar to the Samsung Galaxy Player 5.8, a media player only available in Korea.
According to the report, the so-called Galaxy Phonblet will run Android Jelly Bean and have dual-SIM capabilities.
Further details are thin the ground, but if the source is to be believed, this might be a device to keep an eye out for at next month's Mobile World Congress expo in Barcelona.
Busy times ahead?
This last week has seen a rather disproportionate amount of Samsung mobile speculation. Earlier in the week we reported on the possibility of a 6.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with the Exynos Octa eight-core processor arriving later in the year. Further reports spoke of a Galaxy Note 8.0 to compete directly with the Apple iPad mini. Finally, on Friday, the Samsung Galaxy S4 allegedly showed up in benchmarking tests. Whether SamMobile is on the money with the Galaxy Fonblet remains to be seen, but we can't see that name sticking - unlike this snow.
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Review Roundup: This week's hottest reviews on TechRadar
As the whole of the UK comes to a grinding halt underneath a vigorous sprinkling of snow, TechRadar's international team has been forging on. The testing never ends!
This week we've been playing with a wide range of play things: TVs, phones, cameras, tablets, laptops… Check out this week's hottest gear and the rest of the week's tested tipples:
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 review
The Yoga 11 is the little brother of last year's Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, one of the flagship laptop-tablet hybrids for the launch of full-blown Windows 8. At 11 inches, it's smaller and runs the ARM-powered so it has more in common with an Android tablet than a traditional laptop. While the market has been disappointingly quiet, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 offers something a little different for Windows hybrid hunters. Its screen is the same size as the Sony Vaio Duo 11, and an inch smaller than the Dell XPS 12, but those machines run full-fat x86 Intel chips and cost over £1,000/US$1,100 to the Yoga 11's £699/$849. It's a nifty device in itself, but it's not as fun as Microsoft Surface, and unless you're looking for a work laptop that doubles as a nifty tablet to watch films on, we'd advise forking out for the Sony Vaio Duo.
Hands on: Microsoft Surface Pro review
Microsoft Surface Pro is the full-blown Windows 8 version of the Surface RT laptop-tablet hybrid device we reviewed in Tech. last year. It will run on an Intel chip rather than a low-power mobile option, and will consequently be able to run any software that any other Windows 8 machine can run. In other words, it's the non-hamstrung version. The one people might actually want to buy. Microsoft isn't yet ready to talk about the exact launch date for this product, but we have had a chance to have a good play with it and to try out the new pen. We didn't have enough time to test battery life but Windows Store apps feels just as responsive as on Surface RT, and desktop programs feel as responsive as you'd expect from a Core i5. Microsoft's first real PC is shaping up to be really great and really portable.
Nikon 1 V2 review
Although the Nikon 1 J1 proved to be an incredibly popular compact system camera (which has since been replaced by the Nikon 1 J2 and joined by the Nikon 1 J3), its larger sibling, the Nikon 1 V1, was never as popular. Perhaps seen as not serious enough for "advanced photographers", its high asking price put off the beginners who were busy investing in the Nikon 1 J1. Now, however, Nikon has replaced the Nikon 1 V1 with the Nikon 1 V2, which promises to be an evolution of the existing camera and is what Nikon hopes will attract those lucrative more serious customers - the ones who are more likely to buy additional lenses and other accessories down the line. Although this camera probably still won't overtake the J series in terms of popularity, the images from it are a step up for those looking to get a little more serious with their photography, making it a good introduction to the world of CSCs.
Apple iMac 27-inch review
The 27-inch 2012 iMac has real style, but it doesn't sacrifice function to form. Its screen is excellent, has lots of power under the hood and the Fusion Drive option is a great alternative to a speedy-but-expensive SSD or a capacitous-but-slow HDD. Some may bemoan the lack of an optical drive, but for our money, a portable solution is more than sufficient considering how little they're used nowadays. Overall, the new iMac is a triumph.
Toshiba 46TL968B review
A good value package from Toshiba that performs at its best with 2D Blu-ray and upscales reasonably well, the Toshiba 46TL968 nevertheless misses a trick or two.
And the rest...
Pentax K-5 II review
Lenovo IdeaPad U310 review
Gametel iOS controller review
DriveNTalk Coda One review
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TSA to remove 'naked body scanners' from airports
Flying the friendly skies is about to get a little less frisky, as the Transportation Safety Administration announced that it's doing away with those revealing backscatter machines.
The TSA said that it has ended its contract with Rapiscan, the maker of the much maligned low-dose X-ray technology, which privacy advocates have deemed "virtual strip searches."
The federal agency was as clear about the reason for the change as the soon-to-be-axed X-ray images: Rapiscan was unable to write software to make the machine less revealing before the summer travel season.
"Due to its inability to deploy non-imaging Automated Target Recognition (ATR) software by the Congressionally-mandated June 2013 deadline, TSA has terminated its contract with Rapiscan," the TSA said in a press release.
Making room for millimeter-wave technology
The TSA has already removed 76 backscatter X-ray machines from U.S. airports in 2012, leaving 174 Rapiscan machines, according to Bloomberg. Instead of these "naked body scanners," the agency will continue to introduce millimeter-wave technology machines manufactured by L-3 Communications Holdings. These new "whole body scanners" are much less intrusive and already in place in airports around the country. Additionally, the millimeter-wave machines are faster than the backscatter machines and use radio frequencies for detection of contraband, not low-dose X-rays. "By June 2013 travelers will only see machines which have ATR that allow for faster throughput," promised the TSA. "This means faster lanes for the traveler and enhanced security. As always, use of this technology is optional."
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More Mega details emerge ahead of full launch this weekend
Announced back in November of last year, Mega, Kim Dotcom's ambitious replacement for Megaupload, is set to officially launch to the public on Jan. 19.
Details have been scarce on just what Mega would be able to do, though Dotcom made several promises like 50GB of free storage for users, and that Mega wouldn't (technically) be in violation of any U.S. laws.
Outside of that though, the exact inner workings of Mega have been kept relatively secret for the past few months.
However, on Friday some users were given early access, and thanks to them, we now know a bit more about just what Mega has in mind.
Beyond basic
At its core, Mega will provide cloud service storage in the same way as similar providers like Dropbox and Google Drive. While there will be a free option, there will also be several paid tiers available for €9.99 (US$13.29, UK£8.39 , AUD$12.66), €19.99 (US$26.59, UK£16.78, AUD$25.34), and €29.99 (US$39.90, UK£25.13, AUD$38.02). Those options will get you 500GB storage/1TB bandwidth, 2TB/4TB, and 4TB/8TB respectively should you need to access both more space and bandwidth. Right now, there is also an inbox and a contacts tab, though as TechCrunch reported, both of those functions haven't been turned on just yet but should be once Mega opens up to everyone.What the future holds
In addition to the base features launching this weekend, Mega also has some big plans for expanding its services in the coming months and year. In two blog posts restricted to early access users, some of these future features were disclosed, painting quite an ambitious picture of where Dotcom wants to take Mega. Both developers and users will see some welcome enhancements coming, such as the ability to better manage file uploads, user-to-user instant messaging, and complete API documentation in the SDK. Most appealing though is the idea that Mega will be going mobile somewhere down the line, as well as have more support for desktop options for "major platforms." Additionally, there are plans for Office-like options, including the ability to create documents and spreadsheets directly in Mega. There are no details on when such facets will be added to Mega's feature set, but if the service truly becomes as robust as Kim Dotcom claimed it will, there will be another serious competitor in the cloud storage space.
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