Paul Fang

Author Archive for Paul Fang

Facebook testing private messaging for Facebook Pages

Paul Fang, Dec 12th 2011 Discuss [0]

It's just been confirmed by communications agency WeAreSocial.sg that Facebook has started testing a feature that allows people to communicate privately with Facebook Pages. Which sounds a bit like what, well, a Twitter page does. Just a couple months ago, we reported that Facebook added a subscribe button, also a very Twitter-like addition to sites (akin to their follow button). Do we see a trend here, or is Twitter doing all the right things, and Facebook is just naturally gravitating towards optimal user interface elements? Read The Full Story

AT&T’s LTE network now active in San Francisco

Paul Fang, Dec 9th 2011 Discuss [5]

San Francisco AT&T users are reporting that the carrier's 4G LTE network is now active in the city by the bay (at least in the downtown area), now with speeds being reported just under 20 Mbps on the download stream. Upload speeds weren't unimpressive either, with speeds approaching just under 10 Mbps. There hasn't been word on whether it's a unofficial launch, or just some pre-deployment testing done by AT&T, but AT&T users probably aren't complaining in San Francisco. Read The Full Story

Australian court denies Apple appeal, Samsung Galaxy Tab sales ban lifted

Paul Fang, Dec 8th 2011 Discuss [7]

Samsung, you win this battle against Apple down under. The Australian court has just officially denied the appeal filed by Apple on their propose sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab. As of now, Samsung is finally cleared to put the Galaxy Tab 10.1 back on the Australian market late next week, just in time for Australian shoppers to check off the tablet on their holiday list during the busy Christmas shopping season (and for Samsung, a naturally higher position on the sales chart, although probably not high enough to stave off Apple). Read The Full Story

AT&T begins throttling heavy iPhone data usage to 2G speeds

Paul Fang, Dec 8th 2011 Discuss [196]

AT&T has reportedly started throttling its heaviest data users (to be exact, the top 5% of its data users) to, well, 2G speeds.   According to CultofMac, AT&T has been alerting customers of their data throttling move by way of a particularly terse text message, which says "Your data usage is among the top 5 percent of users. Data speeds for the rest of your current bill cycle may be reduced." And is punishing those top 5 percent of users with a woefully plodding, snail-moving 2G speed. Read The Full Story

Samsung may one-up Apple with 11.6-inch tablet sporting 2560×1600 resolution, coming February

Paul Fang, Dec 8th 2011 Discuss [38]

Rumor has it that Samsung has plans to take on Apple's upcoming iPad 3 tablet with its own 11.6-inch tablet, which may sport an incredibly dense, Retina display-shaming resolution. The new tablet will also have Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and will be most likely to debut at this year's Mobile World Congress this February. Though the tablet will have a larger display than Samsung’s current Galaxy Tab 10.1, the tablet will be “barely larger”, since the panel will have a thinner bezel with a stunnning 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution, 11.6-inch screen, and a 16:10 aspect ratio. Apple's rumored iPad 3 Retina display should gear up for some competition. Read The Full Story

Google’s Eric Schmidt envisions Google TV on majority of new TVs by summer of 2012

Paul Fang, Dec 7th 2011 Discuss [13]

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has become the unofficial chief bearer of good news for his company at the LeWeb Conference in France this year, in his onstage interview just today. Known for lofty predictions (such as his anticipations for self-driving cars and semantic search engines) when he speaks at conferences, Schmidt spoke about his big plans for Google TV, which he believes will embedded in the majority of new television sets by the summer of 2012. That's quite a prediction to make, even for the Google Chairman, especially since not much ground has been broken by Google TV, at least at the moment. Read The Full Story

Facebook for Android updated, inherits speedier UI from iOS

Paul Fang, Dec 7th 2011 Discuss [8]

Facebook just launched their updated Facebook app for Android, which the social networking giant claims is "now quicker and easier to view photos, get messages and navigate around the app". What does this actually mean? Basically put, it's inherited the interface from the recently updated iPad and iPhone versions of the app. The UI has also been redone for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, with the upper-right drop-down menu instead of the previous hidden menu interface. Read The Full Story

Instagram app for Android confirmed

Paul Fang, Dec 7th 2011 Discuss [10]

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom finally confirmed at the LeWeb conference today that the Android port of the massively popular photo-sharing app on the iPhone was coming soon. Systrom told LeWeb attendees that the photo sharing app had two engineers onboard to accomplish the task. Though currently, there isn't a set release date for when the Android app would be finished, the popularity of Instagram on the iOS platform has spawned a number of photo-sharing app clones on Android, and it'd do Instagram good for them to release as soon as possible. Read The Full Story

Verizon 4G LTE nationwide outage confirmed, limited 3G service

Paul Fang, Dec 7th 2011 Discuss [33]

So it turns out that Verizon's 4G LTE network isn't only down in the Midwest region only, as we originally reported. Verizon has confirmed that 4G LTE is undergoing a nationwide outage at the moment, and that their engineers are working on the outage as we speak. Calls, texts and 3G should be working for the time being for some areas, although 3G is "limited", as some customers have reported their devices operating on either 3G or having no data service at all. It's kind of a bummer for what boasts the fastest network speeds in the nation. Read The Full Story

Microsoft confirms Windows 8 public beta slated for February 2012 launch

Paul Fang, Dec 6th 2011 Discuss [14]

Microsoft has just confirmed that the public beta release of Windows 8 will come in February of 2012, a date that was danced around tentatively, and which we covered previously. At this rate, it's looking pretty good for Microsoft in terms of hitting its development milestones for their tablet-ready new operating system. Now they just have to gear up in hopes of reaching their projected sales, whatever that might be, and which probably will be announced in the near future by the technology giant. Read The Full Story

Apple submits updates to campus plans, stunning renderings revealed

Paul Fang, Dec 6th 2011 Discuss [11]

The City of Cupertino has just posted up today the updated campus plans that Apple submitted to the city last month for its new Campus 2 headquarters, which was announced to much publicity this summer, and was dubbed the Apple spaceship (no explanation needed, hopefully). What a truly amazing place for Apple employees to work on the next iPhone, iPad, or "i" device that comes into conception in the new Apple headquarters soon. They're most likely able to draw inspiration from the very structure that houses them. Pretty amazing, I have to say. Read The Full Story

Google engineer explains why Android UI will never be as fluid as iOS or WP7

Paul Fang, Dec 6th 2011 Discuss [62]

Recent Google engineering intern Andrew Munn has launched into a detailed explanation on Google+ as to why many Android devices are significantly more sluggish and less responsive in terms of user interface and experience than comparable iOS and Windows Phone 7 devices. The root of the problem? Inoptimal priority queuing on Android OS. On one side, iOS has graphics rendering queued as a real-time priority, thereby letting users self-manage which priorities are to be rendered in the background. On the flip side, Android views graphics rendering as a normal priority. As a result, Android devices tend to become more sluggish when they're trying to perform other tasks simultaneously. Read The Full Story