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Pelican Imaging’s unique 16-lens camera module for smartphones could appear in Nokia Lumia handsets as soon as next year, the company has hinted.

The Finnish manufacturer beefed up its investment in Pelican this week and now the imaging start-up’s boss says it is in talks with at least one manufacturer to bring the tech to market in a 2014 handset.

Speaking to Engadget, Pelican’s CEO Chris Pickett didn’t say which manufacturers are testing the tech, but it would seem unlikely that Nokia would pump money into a company only to see others reap the benefits.

Nokia has been very always been very active in pushing mobile camera tech, most recently with its PureView 42-megapixel sensors, which are reportedly coming to Lumia phones.

Could they be combined with Pelican’s tech too?

Why all the fuss?

So what’s this Pelican camera and what makes it so great? Well, the camera unit features 16 individual lenses, all of which snap pictures when the shutter is pressed, while depth information is captured at every pixel.

This, like the innovative Lytro camera, allows the photographer to alter the focus of the image or even have multiple focus points after the shot has been captured.

Photographers can also "change backgrounds, scale any part of the picture, or combine elements from multiple photos into interesting new images," the company claims.

Photos that are shared by the photographer feature all of the information necessary to download and edit on any device.

The tech is certainly pretty neat and could be the biggest thing to happen to smartphone cameras in a long time.

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JovK9-Ig0Cg

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In our tech-focused minds its sometimes easy to forget that not everyone is packing a cutting edge, top of the range smartphone in their jeans pocket.

So when IDC announced on Friday that sales of smartphones had overtaken feature phones for the first time ever, our initial reaction was: ‘Wait is that just happening now?’

Apparently so. According to the research company 51.6 per cent of the 418.6 million handsets shipped during the first three months of 2013 were smartphones.

The figures state that smartphone shipments went up a whopping 42 percent compared with the same period of 2012, bringing the figure to more than 216 million in total.

Samsung way on top

"Phone users want computers in their pockets. The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away," wrote said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC.

Naturally, it’s Samsung which has driven the lion’s share of the increase, with an incredible 32.7 per cent of all smartphone shipments during the quarter.

That’s nearly double Apple’s tally of 17.3 per cent during the same period, while LG was way back in third place, according to IDC’s figures.

So now smartphones have finally taken the lead over their call-and-text happy low-spec rivals we can finally stop talking about the smartphone revolution. Which brings us to the next question…. What’s next?

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One of Microsoft’s UK based thought leaders has indicated that smartphones will be the pivotal member of the trinity of devices with tablets and PCs in coming years.

Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer for Microsoft, told an audience at the Internet World conference in London that, although smartphones are now becoming ubiquitous, they will change the way people behave.

"We will have more and more access to information that will challenge what we do inside and outside of our organisations," he said, adding: "They will not be phones any more; they will be our windows to the digital world."

Their role in providing the quickest way to access information will be crucial, although tablets will also be important for functions that work effectively on touchscreens, and keyboard computers for work that needs a lot of typing and data input.

Coplin also stood by Windows 8 as a disruptive technology and argued that in the long term it could help users to become more creative. The operating system has had generally positive reviews but there have been criticisms, some expressed at the conference session, about the way the user interfaces work with a keyboard.

"We want to disrupt the way that people work, to get them doing more on touch enabled devices, but we’re in a period of pain at the moment," he said.

He portrayed Windows 8 as part of a change that will make people more creative in the long term, and said that over three years they can change the way they think about technology.

The comments came towards the end of a presentation in which Coplin championed the cause of flexible working, suggesting that the traditional office space often hampers creativity and that people should have more freedom to find a place where they can best get a job done.

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While some phone makers are chopping prices to make devices more affordable, BlackBerry has no desire to compete in the budget phone arena, CEO Thorsten Heins said this week.

At a conference in Waterloo, Ontario, Heins bluntly addressed the fact that BlackBerry has no current plans to release phones costing $50 to $60 (UK£33 to £40, AU$49 to $58) or lower.

"This is not BlackBerry," he declared, as reported by Bloomberg.

That said, the Canadian phone maker will launch cheaper devices for developing markets like India, where it sells the BlackBerry Z10 for $800 (UK£530, AU$780). The newly renamed fruity firm just won’t dip quite as low as phones from Asian rivals like ZTE and Huawei.

To reiterate

Heins’s pronouncement adds to a point made by BlackBerry European MD Stephen Bates to TechRadar in February.

"We’ve brought out these high-end devices as a statement of intent – to demonstrate vividly the new BlackBerry," Bates said. "But we don’t see us getting to the entry level tier for some time; certainly not this year."

Indeed, BlackBerry’s focus has been locked on high-end smartphones since the launch of BlackBerry 10.

Compare that to Nokia: The high-end market not being what it had hoped, Nokia recently announced several more affordable phones, including the Lumia 520.

Heins reported that the expensive Z10 sold out in India after just two days, so maybe BlackBerry won’t have the same problem there.

The Z10 is still making its way out across the globe, with a U.S. release date rumored for March 22. We’ll know soon enough whether BlackBerry’s higher-price strategy pans out or not.

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At the heart of ZTE’s next-generation smartphones will be Intel’s dual-core Atom Processor Z2580 processor, the Chinese company announced this week.

This strategic partnership incorporates the fastest of the three Clover Trial+ CPUs announced at Mobile World Conference 2013, with a clock speed of 2.0 GHz.

That’s significantly speedier than the last-generation 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z2460 processor that ZTE put into its first Intel smartphone, the Android-based ZTE Grand X IN.

At the same time, ZTE said that next-generation Z2580-based phones will be able to "deliver the same competitive battery life."

"The platform’s dual-core processor with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology provides double the compute performance and up to 3x graphics capabilities over the Intel Atom Z2460 processor," said ZTE in a press release.

Four Leaf Clover Trail+ relationship

ZTE said that it will build off of the success of the Grand X IN, but didn’t reveal whether or not its next-generation Intel smartphones will be Android-powered and has yet to announce any other specifications.

"The Grand X IN was ZTE’s first flagship smartphone in Europe to feature Intel Inside," said ZTE Europe Mobile Devices General Manager Ao Wen.

"We’ve launched it successfully across Europe in strong cooperation with Intel, and as a result have significantly increased our brand awareness in these important markets."

Governments have been less than thrilled with the the Chinese manufacturer, but Intel seems smitten with its continued relationship with the company.

"ZTE is a fast growing global handset maker that strives to create products with features and capabilities that people care most about," said an Intel spokesperson to TechRadar.

"We share a similar goal in that our focus is on providing customers with compelling Intel technology options that ultimately translate into great products and user experiences."

Intel finally inside more smartphones

With the exception of the Grand X IN, ZTE has been using other semiconductor chipset makers for phones like the ZTE Grand S, ZTE Grand Memo and FireFox OS-running ZTE Open.

However, Intel is taking steps to rival Qualcomm Snapdragon and ARM Cortex processors and make itself a bigger player in the mobile space.

When TechRadar asked about the timing of its move, an Intel spokesperson said that "there is a tremendous amount of innovation happening in the market segment and the landscape is continually evolving."

"Computing is also becoming more and more prevalent in smartphones and we see this as a natural extension of Intel technology. We see tremendous opportunity ahead."

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Korean mobile giant LG has announced the sale of its 10 millionth 4G LTE smartphone.

As improved 4G networks and next-gen consumer adoption continues to increase rapidly, it appears that LG’s position as an early LTE leader has enabled it to cash in, despite losing market share more recently.

The new sales figures double the 5 million it announced in August, a little over six months ago.

LG has now set an ambitious target of hitting 20m LTE phone sales by the end of 2013, with handsets like the Optimus G Pro and the newer Optimus F5 and F7, which will spread 4G to a less exclusive clientele.

Differentiated offerings

In a statement LG CEO Jong-seok Park said: "Aggressive pushing forward with 4G LTE technology allows LG satisfy the needs of consumers and is a huge factor in our growing success in global LTE smartphone sales.

"Having established ourselves as a major industry player, we will continue to expand our footprint in the global LTE market with a wider range of differentiated, high quality LTE smartphones."

However, despite the impressive sales figures, LG continues to lost 4G LTE market share, according to recent figures from Strategy Analytics.

In Q3 2012, it’s share of the pie fell from 15 per cent to just 9 per cent globally. Samsung leads the way with 41 per cent, while Apple – a latecomer to the 4G party – already has 26 per cent of the market.

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Would-be graphic designers rejoice: Adobe has an app designed just for your smartphones.

Announced today, Photoshop Touch for mobile brings the core functions of Photoshop to the form factor of a phone.

Those who’ve been paying attention will know that Photoshop Touch for tablets has been around since last year, though Adobe has planned about bringing the app to life on handsets ever since.

"We wanted to make the app more accessible and available for situations where you don’t have a tablet available," Stephen Nielson, product manager at Adobe, told TechRadar.

"We wanted to bring the same core features of Photoshop to millions of pockets worldwide."

Shop talk

The app features are virtually identical features as Touch for tablets, yet shrunken down to pant pocket size.

Users can utilize layers, advanced selection tools, adjustments and filters as they manipulate images taken straight from their phone’s photo gallery or redacted from the cloud.

There’s also a phone optimized version of Scribble Select that allows for precise selections and cropping even with a finger.

The Camera Fill feature lets users blend layers in real time using their camera as well as add textures.

Adobe has gone to great lengths to make sure everything is accessible within a thumb reach: tool bars around the perimeter make for quick swipes and taps to all the image manipulation tools you’d expect of Photoshop.

What would be mobile without easy share options? Touch users can quickly post their creations to Facebook and Twitter or send via email.

Instagramming it?

Though Photoshop tends to run in fairly graphically advanced circles, Nielson said that the mobile app is appropriate for someone who doesn’t just want to apply a filter to a photo.

"Photoshop Touch is more of an advanced app in a lot of ways," he said. "You can do a lot more with it than any other app, but it does require a little more learning. You can pick it up very quickly, though."

When asked if Adobe is trying to do a little jockeying with Instagram, Nielson noted that what is central to the social site isn’t Touch’s focus.

"Our focus is the core features of Photoshop – the layering, advanced selections. It does include filters and adjustments, but those aren’t the core features.

"We have some unique features, like more transformative tools that transform an image into something different rather than overlaying a filter."

Creative cloud

What really stands out with Adobe’s app offering is the ability to start a project on a desktop, tinker with it on a tablet, then finish it off and share on a phone.

Flip the steps around or skip from one to the other, it doesn’t matter thanks to the Creative Cloud.

If users do start a project on their phone, the image is first saved there and then is transmitted to cloud storage (there’s even a loading bar to let you know when the transmission is complete).

Though there are several cloud subscription models, ranging up to US$50, a free cloud account comes with 2GB of storage.

The app will work on iPhone 4S’s and higher and Android running Ice Cream Sandwich or later. iPod touch (5th generation) owners can also get a taste of Touch.

Except for China, the app is available now through the App Store and Google Play for US$5 globally.

Stay tuned for our full on review of the app, and be kind if you want to critique our photo skills. We’re sensitive, you know.

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BlackBerry won’t be killing BB7 anytime soon – which means those looking for advanced cheaper phones are out of luck.

Given a core segment of the BlackBerry user base are those on the pre-pay market, traditionally spending very little money on a handset, many were expecting to see a phone to service them running BB10 in the same manner as Windows Phone 8, with the likes of the Nokia 620.

However, speaking to TechRadar, BlackBerry European MD Stephen Bates told us the company was focused on making sure people saw it as a high-end company first and foremost:

"We’ve brought out these high-end devices as a as a statement of intent – to demonstrate vividly the new BlackBerry," said Bates. "Our intention is to evolve that portfolio to enter the mid-tier."

"But we don’t see us getting to the entry level tier for some time; certainly not this year. Based on the great sales we’ve had over Christmas in the UK there is a demand for the entry level BlackBerry and we don’t want to give that up so we’re going to continue with Curve and the entry level as we bring BlackBerry 10 down through the mid-tier and eventually into the entry level."

One OS for you, and another for you…

It seems that BlackBerry is going to continue with a two-tier approach for the mobile OS for the time being: UK and Ireland MD Rob Orr told TechRadar that BlackBerry is seeing acceptable sales for BB7 devices, and the company isn’t looking to force them onto BB10 just yet:

"In enterprise the BB7 portfolio is the workhorse device; government, financial institutions… these guys are continuing to purchase BB7," revealed Orr. "And in the prepaid space we had a very successful run for Christmas."

"It was important for us to show that we’re not giving up on BB7," added Bates. "We launched BBM voice and it connects into the BB10 world where we’ve added video and screen sharing."

It seems odd that BlackBerry doesn’t want to bring a cheaper phone running its ‘phoenix’ OS to the market as soon as possible, instead choosing to stagger it over time as it phases out, rather than kills, its older platform.

Whether we’ll see new Curve devices remains to be seen – but if so, it will send out a statement of intent to those that have recently bought BB7 devices that it isn’t giving up on existing customers, which can only be a positive thing.

These quotes form part of our in-depth interview with key members of the BlackBerry board – stay tuned to see the full piece coming soon.

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Ask Siri where she was born and she’ll say that she was "designed by Apple in California," but that’s only the half truth. She almost belonged on Android phones.

The brains behind this voice-activated personal assistant had signed a deal with American carrier Verizon in the fall of 2009, according to a lengthy Huffington Post feature.

The objective was to make Siri a default application for all of the carrier’s Android smartphones, which are of course powered by Apple’s chief rival, Google.

Apple, seeing the potential in Siri, didn’t just make a counteroffer, it bought Siri, Inc. This ensured exclusivity and killed any hope of Siri for Android phones in the future.

The most interesting part is just how far Verizon’s deal for Siri is said to have gone.

"Somewhere in the vaults of the wireless giant, there are unreleased commercials touting Siri as an Android add-on," reported The Huffington Post.

Before Siri for Android, iOS phones

Truthfully, Siri should credit the United States Department of Defense and its $150 million budget for its origin.

Apple’s artificial friend was spun out of a five-year, 500-person project by the Pentagon and Menlo Park, California’s non-profit research institute, SRI International, according to the expose.

The undertaking was "by any measure, the largest AI program in history," said lead researcher David Israel.

As a start-up, Siri, Inc., initially launched its application as an independently developed iOS application before it was pulled from the App Store.

Apple then bought the 24-person company for a reported $150 million to $250 million.

Siri updates in the future

Siri was updated with the launch of iPad 4 and rollout of of iOS 6 last year, adding new languages and the ability to open third-party apps, look up personalized sports stats, and send tweets.

In addition to expanding the way this personal assistant app is a "do engine," Apple is looking to tweak the responses that Siri gives to commands.

The company is searching for a new writer to invoke a little more personality into its voice-activated application.

One thing that Siri will never properly respond to are questions about her almost-in-the-bag deal with Verizon that would have brought her to Android handsets.

She’ll just play coy and direct users to the nearest Verizon stores in the area. Sly.

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LG has used its CES 2013 press conference to confirm it will be bringing a ‘tier one’ smartphone to market.

James Fishler, senior VP of marketing at LG, took to the stage to state that the company was looking to bring a range of top-end smarpthones to the market in 2013, which should help it try to claw back some smartphone share from the likes of Apple and Samsung:

"At MWC next month, and throughout the year, we’ll be bringing more tier one handsets, in various screen sizes," said Fischler.

Will it be a phone? Will it be a tablet?

This ties in with some strong rumours that the Korean brand will be looking to get into the space created by the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, meaning a 5.5-inch screen size on the next LG big launch.

The phone is set to feature a full HD screen in that footprint, meaning a 1080p screen in the palm of your hand. NFC is also certain to be included given the brand has taken pains to show how it will launch interconnected home appliances and TV using the contactless technology.

Word on the virtual internet streets (or superhighways) is that LG’s new behemothic device will launch in March 2013, merely days after it’s announced in Barcelona, as the Korean firm looks to ape Apple in removing the waiting time between launching and actually putting products on shop shelves… but we won’t hold our breath on that one.

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