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Monday, October 21, 2013
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Nokia Lumia 1020 review: More camera than phone
Nokia Lumia 1020's camera is surely a photographer's delight.
The 41MP camera of this smartphone works with the help of oversampling technology. The phone does not actually capture 41MP images, but in 34MP (16:9 aspect ratio) or 38MP (4:3 aspect ratio) resolution. Default images taken by the phone have 5MP resolution, but what Nokia's way of processing images does is reduce the noise to a minimum, thus providing you extremely clear photos, even indoors.
Lumia 1020's camera boasts of lossless zoom, wherein you can crop a small portion of the high-resolution photo without losing any clarity at all. The image quality of Nokia's 5MP images is much better than what you get from any other 5MP camera, and even some 8MP ones.
You can operate the phone's camera in either automatic mode or manual mode (namely the Pro Camera app). The handset boasts of 3x (lossless) digital zoom, ISO settings between 100 to 4000, shutter speed from 1 to 16,000 and optical image stabilization. Lumia 1020 has several 'Lenses' that we have seen in previous Nokia smartphones, such as Panorama, Cinemagraph, Camera 360 and Smart Cam.
The standard camera app takes 5MP photos, while you need to use the Pro Camera app to take the 38MP photos. Nokia Pro Camera lets you shoot in manual mode, which means you have full control of the camera settings. On the other hand, the standard mode adjusts the settings automatically, giving you the best possible image quality under the available lighting conditions.
No matter what the light conditions are, the images are undeniably of high quality. Lumia 1020 captures large photos and the level of details is so good that you can even zoom at a particular portion of a picture without worrying about pixelation.
One big problem we have with Lumia 1020 camera is the slow image processing of both high as well as low-resolution photos. The phone takes great pictures, but you cannot rely on it if you want to capture photos quickly.
Another issue is that the smartphone heats up when the camera is used for too long. In fact, if mobile internet is kept active while taking photos, the phone heats up in just 15 minutes. We don't know whether this issue plagued just our review unit or all Lumia 1020s in the market, but it certainly needs to be looked into considering camera is the device's key selling point.
Similarly, close-up shots aren't really good and you need to be at least 12-15 inch away from the object in order to take the best photo. The performance of the camera is poor when it comes to detecting fluorescent light. If you are using the flash, you might see a hint of yellow in the images.
But under normal settings when the flash is turned off, the pictures that the camera clicks are excellent. The colours are bright and vividness of the images is maintained.
Now the big question: Is Lumia 1020 really the best smartphone camera in the market? Well, it depends. If details in a photograph really matter to you then Lumia 1020 is the best option. But if you simply believe in capturing simple moments of life and details aren't that important, then rivals that take images faster provide a better option.
In a nutshell, Lumia 1020 has a great camera, however, it cannot be a substitute to a high-end digital camera. Also, storage too may be prove to be a constraint when the file size of many photos reach 10MB.
Huge camera hump, no problem
Nokia Lumia 1020 is, basically, Lumia 920 with a huge camera hump at the back. The device has the same specifications and operating system as last year's Nokia flagship, but with the added benefit of a powerful camera. The most powerful camera in any smartphone, in fact. However, this does not bode well for the overall design of the handset.
Though it is slimmer and lighter than Lumia 920, it cannot be put flat on a table or any other surface. The design could have been better, but thankfully it is not as bad as Galaxy S4 zoom. Plus, we found that the huge camera hump does not adversely affect the everyday usage or seem awkward to hold in the hand.
The rest
Other than the camera, Lumia 1020 does not offer much to explore. The hardware, software and design make it an almost exact replica of Lumia 920. Everything - from the chipset to the screen to the operating system - has been analyzed in previous reviews.
The hardware is not great but still workable. Apps and games run smoothly and the AMOLED screen looks good; you can even get rid of the greenish tinge that such displays show by tweaking the settings. Sunlight legibility and viewing angles are great, as was the case with earlier top-end Lumia phones. Software-wise, you get the same fare that other Lumia smartphones have.
Last words
Nokia Lumia 1020 is a great option for those who want a camera more than a smartphone. Both photos and videos are of high quality, though there is the issue of heating up after prolonged use.
But as a smartphone, Lumia 1020 is just passable. It offers nothing more than what Lumia 920 does and it seems that Nokia doesn't really mind that, judging by the negligible upgrades.
Go for it if you want a camera more than a phone. Otherwise, Samsung Galaxy S4 and Apple iPhone 5 (and the upcoming iPhone 5S) are great options as well, providing a more balanced mix of hardware, software and camera.
Twitter’s I.P.O. Plan Has an International Focus
The company’s filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission reports that more than 77 percent of its 218 million monthly average users in the three months through June were outside of the United States.
In its documents for the most anticipated stock sale since Facebook went public last year, the company noted that it was targeting Argentina, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa for faster growth than in the United States.
The company also revealed in the prospectus — the first look at Twitter’s financial health after it announced last month its intent to go public — that it earned far more of its advertising revenue from American users than from foreign users.
Zachary Reiss-Davis, an analyst at Forrester, said the social network would eventually need to show how it could evolve its global advertising efforts and make its offerings more sophisticated.
“Twitter has done a good job of growing its international user base,” he said, “but now it has to work with marketers to create advertising experiences that work for those international users and for marketers.”
Perhaps surprisingly, Twitter’s most active market after the United States is Indonesia, according to Semiocast, a French market research firm. Elsewhere in Asia, Japan and India have also embraced it.
In India, Twitter is widely used by Bollywood stars like Amitabh Bachchan, who has 6.5 million followers on the service.
Yet the budding tech giant faces a series of technical challenges in turning user interest into cold cash, ranging from spotty Internet connections to government bans on the service and fast-growing rivals.
The Twitter platform is language-agnostic, meaning there’s nothing to stop someone from broadcasting messages of up to 140 characters in Swahili, Arabic, French or, for that matter, Klingon or Latin. And the use of characters in Japanese and Chinese, for example, means a user can pack more meaning into a tweet than is the case in English.
Analysts say the social network’s uses, ranging from sharing mundane thoughts on local television shows and sports to organizing social protests and political gatherings, has played a major role in its adoption in both emerging and developed countries.
Twitter said in its filing that it intends to “continue to increase the monetization of our platform” by improving its ability to single out users for “promoted” tweets, or ads, and by expanding its outreach to international advertisers. The company said in the filing that 75 percent of its users entered the service through mobile devices during the second quarter and that 65 percent of its revenue came from mobile ads.
But many users in emerging markets still use low-cost phones that are not designed to take advantage of Twitter’s mobile offerings, meaning the quality of its overseas customer base will depend partly on the continued penetration of higher-end smartphones. The company will also likely have to ramp up its global work force as it looks to increasing sell advertising in regions with multiple languages and cultures.
“Twitter is going to need people on the ground to build relationships,” said Ed Barton, a director at the consulting firm Strategy Analytics in London.
Twitter also faces challenges expanding in countries with authoritarian governments. It said in its S.E.C. filing that “we expect to face challenges in entering some markets, such as China, where access to Twitter is blocked, as well as certain other countries that have intermittently restricted access to Twitter.” Such restrictions will remain a risk for the future, it noted.
Twitter’s problems in China are shared by several other Web services, like Facebook and YouTube, and there is little sign that this will change soon.
The Beijing authorities are wary of the potential of social media to be used to rally opposition to the government and have largely limited social media to China-based organizations, like the microblogging site Weibo, that engage in extensive self-censorship.
Twitter also faces competition for people’s time from rival services. Hundreds of millions of Internet users, mostly in Asia, have turned to smartphone-based messaging services like Line, WeChat, WhatsApp and KakaoTalk, which provide free phone calls and chat functions. While these services are private, and most Twitter comments are public, some people use the services in similar ways to communicate with groups of friends.
Advertising on Twitter, still relatively undeveloped even in the United States and other Western markets, is in its infancy in Asia, analysts say.
“It’s a region with a lot of competitive, regulatory and monitoring issues,” said Neha Dharia an analyst at Ovum, a research firm. “I would say they still have a very long way to go in terms of monetizing the user base. Having said that, there is also tremendous potential.”
And while concerns have been raised in the United States about security agencies potentially tracking individuals’ activities on Twitter, analysts say that the company’s American roots give it credibility with some international users, particularly civilians in authoritarian countries.
“For some people outside the U.S., Twitter’s location is perceived as a positive,” Mr. Barton said.
HTC Reports Its First Loss, but Samsung Shows Vigor
The outlook contrasts strikingly with the report from HTC. The company posted a net loss of 2.97 billion Taiwan dollars, or about $101 million, in the third quarter, after net income of 3.9 billion Taiwan dollars a year earlier.
Both companies are feeling pressure on the low end of the phone market, where new competitors, mostly in China, are doing well in what is the fastest-growing segment of the market. HTC has focused on premium models, however, despite the demand in the lower end of the market, where Lenovo, ZTE and Huawei, all Chinese companies, are growing rapidly.
Samsung, however, has strength at the top. It also has a diversified mix of products that provide additional cash. Samsung is not only the biggest maker of smartphones, it is the leading maker of memory chips. It sells chips to other companies, like Apple, in addition to supplying them to its own smartphone production lines.
“Samsung’s diversity of profit streams plus strength and scale in all tiers of smartphones helps them to continue to grow profits,” Mark Newman, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, wrote in a note to clients.
Samsung did not provide an explanation of its growth, but analysts said the company was probably benefiting from a recent increase in the price of memory chips after a fire at a factory owned by a Samsung rival, SK Hynix, in Wuxi, China.
While the torrid pace of sales of high-end smartphones like Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has eased somewhat, the company sells a range of lower-price devices, too. This positions it to benefit from expected strong growth in low-price and midrange smartphones, analysts say.
Samsung’s numbers were preliminary; final results are expected to be reported at the end of the month.
Over the last few years, the performance of Samsung has been roughly inverse to that of HTC, whose problems continue to deepen. Though HTC previously forecast a quarterly loss, the number reported on Friday was even bigger than analysts had expected. The company’s flagship smartphone, the HTC One, has failed to catch on with high-end users, who have favored devices from Samsung and Apple.
HTC’s sales plunged to 47.1 billion Taiwan dollars in the third quarter from 70.2 billion dollars a year earlier.
According to Gartner, a research firm, the company’s share of the worldwide smartphone market fell to 2.6 percent; in 2010 and 2011, it flirted with double-digit percentages of market share.
Horace Dediu, an independent telecommunications analyst in Helsinki, Finland, said it could be difficult for HTC to recover. When other phone makers posted their first quarterly losses, it was only a few years before their handset businesses were sold. Others got out of the phone business entirely.
What Mr. Dediu referred to as the “post-traumatic life expectancy of phone vendors” has been shortening. Motorola lasted five years; Nokia and BlackBerry only two.
“Once you hit any bump in the road, you are essentially derailed,” he said. “In the phone space, you hit one bad quarter and you are out.”
Only one major cellphone maker, LG of South Korea, has recovered from a deep crisis in its phone-making division, Mr. Dediu said. But LG’s smartphone arm is just one part of a diversified conglomerate, like Samsung, helping it to ride out the dips.
HTC has also suffered from internal discord, and a series of executives have quit the company in recent months. One of the company’s top design executives, Thomas Chien, was arrested in August in connection with a police investigation of theft of trade secrets from HTC.
Cher Wang, HTC’s chairwoman, said in a recent interview that Mr. Chien, who could not be reached for comment, was trying to recruit HTC employees for a new company he was planning to form.
She insisted that the executive departures would have no effect on the company’s operations, saying that all of the HTC material that the employees were accused of taking had been recovered.
“In terms of technology, it’s not going to affect us,” Ms. Wang said. “It will not have any detrimental effect on us.”
The worse-than-expected results will put pressure on HTC to find a business partner, Mr. Dediu and other analysts said. There has been speculation that the company could link up with one of the growing Chinese companies looking to expand outside their home territory.
China employs two million microblog monitors state media say
Sina Weibo, launched in 2010, has more than 500 million registered users with 100 million messages posted daily
More than two million people in China
are employed by the government to monitor web activity, state media say,
providing a rare glimpse into how the state tries to control the internet.
The Beijing News says the monitors, described as internet opinion analysts, are on state and commercial payrolls.
China's hundreds of millions of web users increasingly use microblogs to criticise the state or vent anger.
Recent research suggested Chinese censors actively target social media.
The report by the Beijing News said that these monitors were not required to delete postings.
They are "strictly to gather and analyse public opinions
on microblog sites and compile reports for decision-makers", it said. It also
added details about how some of these monitors work.
Tang Xiaotao has been working as a monitor for less than six months, the report says, without revealing where he works.
"He sits in front of a PC every day, and opening up an application, he types in key words which are specified by clients.
"He then monitors negative opinions related to the clients, and gathers (them) and compile reports and send them to the clients," it says.
The reports says the software used in the office is even more advanced and supported by thousands of servers. It also monitors websites outside China.
China rarely reveals any details concerning the scale and sophistication of its internet police force.
It is believed that the two million internet monitors are part of a huge army which the government relies on to control the internet.
The government is also to organise training classes for them for the first time from 14 to 18 October, the paper says.
But it is not clear whether the training will be for existing monitors or for new recruits.
The training will have eight modules, and teach participants how to analyse and judge online postings and deal with crisis situations, it says.
The most popular microblogging site Sina Weibo, launched in 2010, now has more than 500 million registered users with 100 million messages posted daily.
Topics cover a wide range - from personal hobbies, health to celebrity gossip and food safety but they talso include politically sensitive issues like official corruption.
Postings deemed to be politically incorrect are routinely deleted
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