BlackBerry 10 Aristo specifications leak out

Research in Motion. Expect only the *best! If this leak holds true, RIM will be back as a dominant player.

This past week readers were treated to leaks galore. Covering the spec lists on the full touch BlackBerry 10 L-Series (Laguna, Lisbon, & London) to render mock-ups on the L and N-Series, the first BlackBerry 10 keyboard phone. While the N-Series slightly disappointed, my spirits were again lifted after seeing this on my desk.

I’ve never seen the A series mentioned anywhere, so not only are we revealing the specs but the models name.  At this point, I’m unable to comment on whether this will be a series or a one-off phone for those who want larger screens.

With the height and width seeing a slight bump, the spectacular specifications listed here could only mean RIM is damn serious about claiming the market it once owned.

The BlackBerry 10 Aristo (Aristo” is Greek for “the best”) I think will be the ultimate of the BlackBerry 10’s to come. Let’s go check out the specs already!

Getting technical – In depth:

Using the baseband modem is the MDM9x15 (possibly the 9615 – if so this is the same one found in the iPhone 5), which is a so-called world mode mobile data modem and according to Qualcomm’s documentation, supports “LTE FDD/TDD CAT3, SVLTE-DB, Release 8 DC-HSPA+, TD-SCDMA, GSM/GPRS/EDGE, EGAL, 1x Adv., EV-DO Rev. A/B”.

The processor is a Qualcomm APQ8064 Krait Quad Core 1.5GHz. The APQ8064 was announced in July 2012 at Uplink, Qualcomm’s developer conference by Raj Talluri who was previously employed at Texas Instrument and was closely involved with the developments of the OMAP 3 and OMAP 4 chipsets. Classifying the APQ8064 in the S4 Pro family this chipset featuring four Krait cores running at up to 1.5 GHz when all four cores are taxed, or up to 1.7 GHz when only one core is active*!

Aristo:

• 136 x 68 x 8.85 mm / 5.35” x 2.59” x 0.34” in

L-Series: (Laguna, Lisbon, London)

• 130 x 65.6 x 9mm / 5.11” x 2.58” x 0.35” in

Display: OCTA Glass OLED 4.65″, 1280×720 – 24bit – 16:9 (L-Series: 1280×768 resolution)
Those that are unfamiliar, OCTA is a development of Samsung Mobile Display. OCTA – On-Cell Touch Active-Matrix Light-Emitting Diode (AMOLED). This display was designed and produced to help accelerate performance demands from today’s mobile devices. With On-Cell Touch this removes embedded layers on the screen giving it the competitive edge of the 8.85mm depth – the thinnest BlackBerry so far.

With the baseband modem we know this will be a world device.

NA = North America

• GSM – Quad band (not specified)
• WCDMA – 2100/1900/850-850MHz
• LTE – AWS/700/1900/850MHz

EU = European Union/APAC = Asia Pacific

• GSM – Quad band (not specified)
• WCDMA – 2100/1900/850-850/900MHz
• LTE – 1800/2.6GHz/800/900MHz

Another in the full touch family, this BlackBerry 10 is a Capacitive All Touch device. Interaction will be no doubt the same rich and intuitive gestures from the PlayBook to the Dev Alpha’s.

The camera repeats with 8MP. This should have seen 12MP with everything else in place. The usual suspects of 1080p/30fps are here. The front-facing camera see’s a nice 2MP update at 720p

Now it gets exciting! 2GB of RAM. This is what I want to see in all 2013 models. 16GB onboard Flash is present and includes a 16GB MicroSD card fitting in a Hot Swappable MicroSD slot. Still no mention for support of the 64GB microSD.

Wi-Fi will have the “n” inclusion with backwards compatibility of a/b/g. With a speed boast from 2.5GHz/5GHz with 4G MobileHotspot.

I said it before: connectivity, accessibility, and the sharing of information – This has not been forgotten. MicroUSB, MicroHDMI, NFC, and DLNA come treated with Bluetooth 4.0. This is a major update as so far leaked documentations indicate that the L-Series devices mentioned will see BT 2.1 which is a huge let down going forward.

Audio over-haul: Two microphones are common, but having four with Noise Reduction is just a bonus. The over-haul is the Wideband AMR. Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate uses a speech compression technique to increase the audio bandwidth to 7 kHz. This would roughly double the speech bandwidth compared to narrow-band AMR without impacting the radio and/or backhaul requirements.

Holy smokes Batman! The Aristo will be packed with a 2800mAh battery. The downside…it will be a sealed battery with a non-removable door. Given that it will be 8.85mm in thickness, this wasn’t a big surprise. However, the BlackBerry community aren’t familiar to sealed units (aside from PlayBook and Dev Alpha owners) compared to iPhone users as all previous BlackBerry’s have removable batteries. This will take getting used to for the most, but under the new architecture of QNX, I don’t believe battery pulling will be of a common practise. The PlayBook’s are a good example of this.

Among the sensors, Face detect for phone calls shows up here. I mentioned Apple’s FaceTime with a question mark in a previous post, but it sounds like the ability to answer calls by a quick scan of the face. This tech reminds me of Samsung’s face detection for unlocking access. Let’s hope RIM or it’s third-party choice if this is the case has significantly improved this functionality as this would be something heavily adopted by motorist worldwide.

SIM remains to be a mystery. I still believe the MicroSIM has been adopted for BlackBerry 10′s, although I’m really hoping it will be a NanoSIM.

The specifications left out are straight-forward and were not areas that needed to be expanded and/or explored on.

Though not being officially announced this is indeed classified as a leak. So take as you may.

Comparison Chart: L-Series vs Aristo

BlackBerry 10 Smartphones

Item	Laguna/R069 (Verizon)	Lisbon/R070 (AT&T Canada)	London/R072 (RoW)	Aristo/R081
Processor	Qualcomm SnapDragon M5M8960		TI OMAP 4 +ST-E M5730	Qualcomm APQ8064 Krait Quad Core 1.5GHz
Dimensions	130 x 65.6 x 9mm			136 x 68 x 8.85mm
Radio	LTE band 13 (700 MHz) Dual band CDMA (850/1900 MHz) Dual band UMTS (900/2700 MHz) Quad band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)	Quad band LTE (700/850/1700/1900 MHz) Triband HSPA (850/1900/2100 MHz) Quad band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)	21Mbps HSPA+ Quad band HSPA/UMTS (850/900/1900/2100 MHz) Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHZ)	NA – GSM – Quad band (not specified) – WCDMA – 2100/1900/850-850MHz – LTE – AWS/700/1900/850MHz – EU/APAC – GSM – Quad band (not specified) – WCDMA – 2100/1900/850-850/900MHz – LTE – 1800/2.6GHz/800/900MHz
Display	4.2″ 1280 x 768 resolution 355 DPI 24 bit color 15:9			OCTA Glass OLED 4.65″ – 1280 x 720 – 24 bit Colour – 16:9
Navigation	Capacitive Touch			Capacitive All Touch
Camera	8MP A/F with Flash 1080p recording at 30fps 2MP front facing camera
Memory	1GB Ram + 16GB Flash + Hot Swappable MicroSD slot			2GB RAM + 16GB Flash – Hot Swappable MicroSD slot 16GB MicroSD card
Wifi	802.11 a/b/g/n 2.4GHz/5GHz 4G Mobile Hotspot		802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz 4G Mobile Hotspot	802.11 a/b/g/n 2.4GHz/5GHz 4G Mobile Hotspot
GPS	Autonomous and A-GPS
Software	BB10.x
Connectivity	MicroUSB – MicroHDMI – Wifi Direct – NFC – DLNA – Bluetooth 2.1			MicroUSB – MicroHDMI – Wifi Direct – NFC – DLNA – Bluetooth 4.0
Audio	Dual Stereo Microphone for Noise reduction			Stereo speakers – 4 Microphones – Noise Reduction – Wideband AMR
Battery	Removeable battery (1800mAh)			2800mAh sealed battery with non-removeable door Footprint 104 x 57.1 x 3.4mm (20H use for Multimedia user)
Sensors	Ambient Light Sensor – Accelerometer – Magnetometer – Gyroscope Face detect for phone calls

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Nokia Lumia 920 Super Sensitive Screen:The Battery Killer for phone

Guys from JDB Pocketware (creators of legendary PocketShield) have risen up a concern and written an open letter to Nokia regarding what could be a potential battery drain issue on the Nokia Lumia 920:

Nature of Windows Phone buttons

Pressing either the power button or the camera button will cause the device screen to turn on, even when the proximity sensor detects proximity.

The lockscreen behavior
Upon power on, screen lights up and shows the lockscreen (or camera), which runs a timeout to auto power off the device if screen is not touched in X seconds.

But if screen is touched, the timeout counter is restarted, so continuous touching could lead into a loop, the “death loop” which won’t let the device to power off (standby) and will consume battery power.

New touchscreen technology
The Nokia Lumia 920 comes with a touchscreen that reacts to touch from pretty much any material such as metal or clothes. This can be dangerous…

So here is a theory
When the phone is inside a pocket or bag it can be touched by other objects. These objects can press buttons and can touch/rub the screen. This will initiate the “death loop” for who knows how much time, could be minutes or hours, depends on how active the user is since body movement will produce friction between objects/clothes and touchscreen.

The “death loop” will drain battery and battery is precious.

Solution?

Should be simple: screen must not power on if the proximity sensor detects proximity. Current version of Windows Phone does not take care of this. The big question is: will Windows Phone 8 take care of this? Is the Lumia 920 a potential battery drainer?

Nokia replied on its blog about its problem

“While the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 both enjoy super sensitive touch, the firmware has been configured to avoid accidental activation of the display.  In testing this has not proven to be an issue or to cause unwanted battery drainage.

What has been configured to stop it happening?

The firmware requires a ‘landing event’ to move into active mode and without a repeat of that landing event will eventually return into sleep mode.”

VIA Source

Apple Maps: A swing and a miss

For days, I was frightened to upgrade my IPhone 4 to Apple’s new iOS6 operating system.  I already have pathological fears about fresh-out-of-R&D operating systems, but with the sheer number of Apple Maps horror stories flooding Twitter, I was legitimately terrified.  But time marches on, and so I crossed my fingers, finished my living-will, and ran the installer.

4 minutes later I was breezing through an upgrade wizard, and my phone felt new and shiny again like it did on the first day.  I even forgot about the massive spider-web crack on the backside.  In that moment, I decided that the twitter hounds were definitely exaggerating.

Tonight, I finally got around to using Apple Maps for the first time. Here’s a screenshot of the first search I ran (my favorite chinese food takeout, Asia Garden 2 in New Jersey).  Note: that’s not a translation tool, the map is actually showing me another continent. 

Baffled, I decided to add in the town and state.  Surely Apple would get it right if I provide the location of the actual restaurant.  

At this point I’m stunned.  Not only did the app present me with a different language, but it gave me the wrong location twice for a single business. I didn’t care enough to see if I’d go three-for-three, so I jumped over to Google Maps in Safari knowing full well I’d get the right address.

Bing! (No pun intended).  Google maps hits the nail on the head, just like always.  But while I was glad for Google, I was also deeply sad for Apple.  They’ve let down their customers by cheapening the quality of their app just to save a few bucks on Google Maps licensing fees.  Was it worth the backlash?  I didn’t think Apple, a company that prides itself on principles of artistry and sound visual aesthetics, would make a cold business decision without prior technical due diligence.  I didn’t think Apple operated like Microsoft.

I’m sure one day Apple will have a maps tool 50x better than Google’s, and they’ll rake in the billions for it.  Or maybe they wont.  But right now, I’m stuck with an app that gives me results from 12,000 miles away.

VIA

Samsung,Motorola and Nokia publically criticizes the Iphone 5

The manufacturer of World Class products that delivered the best experience possible to its customers is facing a massive attacks from its competitors.

The major reason for this attack was flaw in its mapping service which allows competitors to comment on apple's latest iphone 5.

So on This Maps app problem MOTOROLA MOBILITY on TWITTER commented in such a way that

Motorola Mobility said on twitter that many iphone 5 users are now "ilost"

Nokia which has proved that it has better camera in its upcoming phone nokia lumia 920 over iphone 5 in terms of low light images had also commented on the failure of apple maps.
On this rivalary the official Nokia blog posts

Our superior apps are built on the most accurate, automotive-grade Navteq maps, meticulously developed by over 20 years of know-how. We believe that the best user experience comes indeed from precise data, robust processing of core platform functionalities like routing, geocoding and traffic, and by user friendly apps. All this cannot be built overnight.

Similarly Samsung commented on apple by releasing a new ad on youtube that the next big thing is already here and ad showcased the feature of instant photo and music sharing by NFC,which was unavailable in iphone 5

My personal views on apple

It's shame that Apple's own incompetence and sheer bloody mindedness has left them looking so stupid.

I am trying to understand whey they didn't leave google maps until the apple version was ready

How any half competent tester could have verified the maps app as ready is beyond me.It comes across as something out of alpha stage development,never mind a beta version

Unfortunately apple's aim of severing the remaining ties with google has lead to them jumping the gun a little i felt.Not only that but i guess they had to include the maps as it is the only real significant change to iOS outside of numerous other,but relatively minor tweaks and changes