Samsung Will Give You Up to $300 for Your Old Smartphone

Samsung is giving you another reason to choose its smartphones — a rebate of up to $300 for your old smartphone.

The program, unveiled on the brand’s Facebook Page on Monday and on samsungupgrade.com, promises a refund within 30 days for anyone who buys a new Samsung smartphone and mails in their old one. A trade-in on an iPhone 4S 64GB in perfect condition will fetch you the full $300, but the rebates fall sharply from there. For instance, a 32GB version of the same model will only get you $230 and the 16GB version will get you $215.

However, such a rebate will essentially render a new top-of-the-line Samsung smartphone free or close to it: A Samsung Galaxy S III is $199 with a new contract and a Galaxy Note costs $249 with a new contract. The push comes as Samsung’s sales far outpace Apple’s on a global basis, but, like Microsoft, is viewed these days as an underdog against the Cupertino powerhouse. The Samsung-Apple skirmish isn’t just happening in the marketplace, though: The two are in the midst of a protracted courtroom battle over Samsung’s alleged theft of Apple’s mobile phone intellectual property.

In addition, both Apple and Samsung look to be planning big announcements over the next few weeks: Samsung has a mysterious event planned for Aug. 15 that appears to be related to its Galaxy Note devices. Apple, meanwhile, is reportedly planning to introduce a new iPhone model on Sept. 12.

What do you think? Is this incentive enough to make you want to switch to Samsung? Let us know in the comments. (Mashable.com)

Meet Nina: Siri’s Cousin for Apps

Siri may have her critics, but Apple’s talkative virtual assistant is definitely useful for some functions, like checking the weather and texting. Nuance, which works with Apple on voice control, now plans to take Siri-like abilities to more apps.

The product is called Nina, and it’ll let businesses build voice capabilities right into their apps — iOS or Android — via a software development kit (SDK). Nuance says it’s the first voice assistant with an SDK (Siri still doesn’t have one), and Nina obviously has access to all of Nuance’s data on the industries that use its tech: banks, airlines, hotels, retailers and more.

Nina is aimed at the enterprise, essentially taking the automated call center functions you might encounter when calling an 800 number, and putting it into an app.

“Nina takes natural-language understanding, and it provides a way for a developer to add that into an app,” says Robert Weideman, executive vice president of Nuance’s enterprise division.

In a demo at Mashable‘s offices, Nuance reps showed us a mock banking app equipped with Nina. Responding to commands like “Pay my bill,” or even “Pay the full balance on my Visa bill on August first,” Nina performed tasks that would probably take complex navigation in one step.

Nina is dependent on Nuance’s Voice Assistant Cloud, so she won’t work without a network connection. And as we discovered in the demo, her speed and ability to parse longer phrases depend on the quality of that connection. Using a Verizon 3G modem, Nina had trouble figuring out the longer bill-paying command above, but on Wi-Fi she executed it almost instantly.

Nina also happens to sound almost exactly like Siri, though Nuance says businesses will be able to choose from 40 different voices, and even be able to customize it with their own voice “persona,” if they have one.

One of the major differences between Nina and Siri is voice biometrics, which means Nina can actually tell that it’s you talking, and not someone who just picked up your phone. This can act as both a security and convenience feature — after all, passwords become redundant if the app can tell it’s the right person speaking just by voice.

“For the first time on a mobile device, our virtual assistant doesn’t just understand what you said and what you want, we can actually understand who said it,” says Weideman.

Nuance is releasing the SDK for Nina today, and the company says the first crop of apps incorporating the service should arrive in the fall.

What apps would you like to see Nina built into? Share your ideas in the comments. (Mashable.com)

Student Texted About Quitting Texting While Driving Off Cliff, Lived

In yet another example of why you shouldn’t text and drive, an Alabama college student drove off a cliff while texting.

Fortunately, he survived, but incurred some serious injuries. After six months of recovering, he’s finally able to talk about it.

Right before Chance Both’s truck went over a cliff, he texted, “I need to quit texting, because I could die in a car accident.”

Both suffered a broken neck, a crushed face, a fractured skull and traumatic brain injuries, a local news station reported. He was brought back to life three times by doctors.

Lately, texting while walking has been an increasing issue for law enforcement. Distracted walkers can cause accidents or get themselves into dangerous situations.

We told you earlier this week about a Philadelphia man being so distracted by talking on his cellphone, that he fell onto train tracks and was knocked unconscious. Luckily for him, no trains were headed to the station at that time.

Cellphone distraction also infamously caused a man to nearly walk into a brown bear and resulted in one woman’s embarrassing moment falling into a mall fountain.

Earlier this summer, we asked you if you think texting while walking should be illegal. The majority of you said no, but had strong opinions about the dangers of texting and walking.

Do you know anyone who texts while driving or walking? Tell us in the comments. (Mashable.com)

Zuckerberg Denies the Facebook Phone. What’s the Evidence?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday in the company’s first-ever earnings call that “it wouldn’t really make much sense” for the social networking monolith to build its own smartphone.

A “Facebook phone” has been rumored for sometime, however — and many analysts regard its appearance as a matter of when, not if.

So what’s the evidence that a mobile device based entirely around the social network is on its way?

Back in November of last year, the scuttlebutt originally reported by All Things D was that Facebook and HTC were working together to develop a phone codenamed “Buffy” that would hit store shelves in 12 to 18 months — as soon as this coming fall.

Buffy was said to run on a modified version of Android, tweaked heavily to revolve more prominently around Facebook and HTML5 support.

Then The New York Times reported this May that Facebook had hired “more than a half dozen” former Apple engineers who had previously worked on the iPhone or iPad to help build hardware for a Facebook phone. Finally, a Bloomberg report earlier this month reiterated much of what ATD reported in November, but pegged the mysterious “Facebook phone” launch to mid-2013.

The anticipation has grown so great that some designers have already began mocking up Facebook phone concepts (see gallery below).

While Zuckerberg denied the logic of Facebook building a phone, there are plenty of reasons why doing so would, in fact, make a lot of sense.

Facebook has been widely criticized for struggling to adapt to an increasingly mobile web, which most analysts see as dominating the emerging wave of digital life. One hedge fund manager recently predicted that Facebook’s mobile sluggishness would lead to the company virtually disappearing by the year 2020.

A Facebook-centric operating system — on a Facebook-branded smartphone — could go a long way toward capturing more mobile users and ad dollars.

So have all the rumors simply been hot air and will Facebook instead focus its efforts on improving a widely maligned mobile app? Or is Zuckerberg simply hedging his bets with some tricky wordplay, and a Facebook phone is in fact on the way? Let us know your take in the comments. (Mashable.com)

Samsung records robust sales of latest smartphone

SEOUL—South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, the world’s top smartphone maker, has sold more than 10 million units of its newest Galaxy S III model since its launch about two months ago, a report said Sunday. The company said earlier this month it expected a record operating profit of 6.7 trillion won ($5.9 billion) in the second quarter, boosted by strong sales of its flagship Galaxy smartphones.

The Korean firm, which is battling with Apple’s iPhone and iPad for supremacy in the lucrative smartphone and tablet market, has seen heavy demand for its new Galaxy S III phone, which was introduced in Europe in May.

“It appears that it (accumulated sales) has exceeded 10 million units,” said J.K. Shin, head of the Samsung’s mobile communications division, according to Yonhap news agency.

Shin said last month he expected the global sales of the new phone – available in more than 140 countries – would surpass 10 million by the end of July, including sales of about a million units at home.

The third version of the firm’s Galaxy S series offers face-recognition technology and improved voice-activated controls as well as a more powerful processor.

It also has a 4.8-inch (12.2-centimeter) screen that is 22 percent larger than the previous S2 version, while it can detect eye movements and override the automatic shutdown if the user is looking at the screen.

Samsung shipped 44.5 million smartphones in the first quarter, exceeding the 35.1 million of US arch-rival Apple, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics in April.

Samsung, embroiled in a slew of patent suits with Apple in international courts, is pinning its hopes on the S III to further erode its market share before the expected new version of Apple’s iPhone 5 this year.

Earlier this month, Samsung won one of those patent battles, with a British judge ruling that Samsung’s Galaxy tablet did not infringe Apple’s registered design and that consumers were not likely to confuse it with the iPad tablet.

Source: Inquirer.net

The World Will Soon Have More Phones Than Humans

There are more than 6 billion mobile subscriptions today. But that number “will soon exceed that of the human population,” according to a new World Bank report.

It was only 12 years ago that there were less than 1 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide. Today, three-quarters of the entire population has access to a mobile phone.

Subscriptions in low and middle-income countries increased by more than 1,500% between 2000 and 2010 — from four to 72 per 100 inhabitants. (Keep in mind that in many countries, it is common to have more than one SIM card.)

While voice is still the primary use for mobile device, texting comes in at a close second. Nearly 5 trillion text messages were sent in just 2010 alone. Those 160-character snips accounted for 80% of operator revenue — that’s a whopping $106 billion.

But while the wildfire-like spread of mobile is notable, the big story is who is using the technology and where.

It’s the younger generation that’s driving mobile sales in developing countries. Those under age 15 make up 29% of the population in low- and middle-income economies, compared to just 17% in high-income nations. The report notes that these developing countries are “growing richer, so more consumers can afford to use mobile handsets for more than just essential voice calls.”

This is huge for developing nations because, the World Bank notes, it creates “unprecedented” opportunities for employment and education.

As expanded technology drives down the price of mobile devices, networks are doubling in bandwidth nearly every 18 months, expanding into rural areas. That means more Internet access and higher app downloads. Those applications, the study says, empower individual users and “boost the economy as a whole.”

Source: Mashable

Philippines cited for mobile phone use

The use of mobile phones in the Philippines has brought better information access for farmers, broader citizen engagement and link to traffic data for taxi drivers, according to a new World Bank report.

The country also witnessed one of the first uses of text messaging as a medium for social change during the EDSA II revolt in 2001 that led to the ouster of then President Joseph Estrada, the study cited.

According to the report “Information and Communications for Development: Maximizing Mobile,” which was released on Monday, there were 101 mobile cellular subscriptions for every 100 people in the Philippines in 2011, a jump from 41 subscriptions for every 100 people in 2005.

The report defined mobile cellular subscriptions as subscriptions to a public mobile telephone service using cellular technology, which provided access to the public switched telephone network. Postpaid and prepaid subscriptions were included. But it said that mobile subscriptions did not reflect actual mobile phone ownership since there could be multiple subscriptions.

Worldwide, the number of mobile subscriptions grew from one billion in 2000 to more than six billion in 2011, of which nearly five billion were in developing countries, the report said.

In 2011, 96 percent of the total mobile cellular subscriptions in the Philippines were prepaid.

In 2010, mobile cellular network in the Philippines covered 99 percent of the population and 80 percent of households reported ownership of a mobile telephone.

The World Bank cited the Philippines as an example in using mobile’s potential to strengthen accountability and transparency in public services and processes.

In particular, it said that the Department of Education has worked with the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific to set up a website that allowed the citizens to view significant statistics on local schools.

The site, called checkmyschool.org, is a government-to-citizen online and mobile-based interactive tool that includes information such as budget allocations, teacher and textbook information and test scores for about a fifth of the 44,000 schools in the country, the report said.

It is also an avenue for teachers and parents to express areas of concern that they feel should be addressed.

The site, which seeks to improve education service delivery through transparent and accountable behavior by school staff, has improved community participation and vigilance and teacher behavior, the World Bank said.

“These efforts are typically innovative because they often change the delivery or management of a conventional service or process,” the report said.

Commercial farmers in the Philippines also benefited from accessing price information through mobile phones, reporting income gains and increase in trust of traders, the report cited.

Prior to the expansion of mobile networks, agricultural producers were often unaware about prices and had to rely on information from traders and agents, the report said.

“Delays in obtaining this data or misinterpretation of second-hand pricing information has serious consequences for agricultural producers, who may end up underselling their products, delivering too little or too much of the product, or having their products wither away,” the World Bank said.

The study also mentioned Cebu City where taxi drivers use mobile phones with global positioning systems to receive traffic data and dispatch information.

The report added that social media, along with messages, videos and pictures sent from mobile phones, were useful tools for organizing protests and monitoring democracy and freedom.

“Mobile communications offer major opportunities to advance human and economic development—from providing basic access to health information to making cash payments, spurring job creation, and stimulating citizen involvement in democratic processes,” said World Bank vice president for sustainable development Rachel Kyte.

“The challenge now is to enable people, businesses and governments in developing countries to develop their own locally relevant mobile applications so they can take full advantage of these opportunities,” Kyte added.

Source: Inquirer.net

75% of World Has Access to Mobile Phones

Approximately three quarters of the world’s population now has access to a mobile phone, according to a new study from the World Bank.

The number of mobile phone subscriptions has skyrocketed over the past 12 years. Less than 1 billion mobile subscriptions were active in 2000, while there’s six billion subscriptions active today. Last year alone, mobile users downloaded more than 30 billion apps.

Additionally, the vast majority of today’s mobile subscriptions (5 billion) are in developing countries, a sign of mobile technology’s importance in countries which haven’t gone through the expensive and difficult process of building land-based communications infrastructure.

“Mobile communications offer major opportunities to advance human and economic development –- from providing basic access to health information to making cash payments, spurring job creation, and stimulating citizen involvement in democratic processes,” said World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development Rachel Kyte in a statement.

“The challenge now is to enable people, businesses, and governments in developing countries to develop their own locally-relevant mobile applications so they can take full advantage of these opportunities.”

The report highlights mobile-based development programs in several countries, including the use of mobile payments in Kenya and job-search apps in Palestine. Mobile apps are also playing a role in disease response, education and monitoring government abuses throughout the developing world.

Smartphones and wireless data packages are still out of the reach of most people. Therefore, many apps designed in developing countries are built as effective low-bandwidth solutions, often employing WAP, SMS and other technologies now considered “low-tech” by developers working with cutting-edge software and hardware.

Are you surprised that mobile phones have become so prevalent across the world? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Source: Mashable

Latest Leaked Images Suggest a 4-Inch iPhone 5

Another day, another set of iPhone 5 rumors. Images released over the weekend of the purported iPhone 5 are the latest in a long list of speculations on the upcoming Apple device. Every year since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, we’ve been subject to a constant flow of rumors between releases. This year’s been no different, with consistent buzz that the famously tight-lipped tech giant will be altering the design of its signature product to include a larger display and other tweaks.

Blog Apple.Pro released images of what it claims are the front face plate of the new device on Sunday. The images show minor alterations to the current iPhone 4S design, with the camera shifting position and a slightly longer body to make room for a 4-inch display. The Wall St Journal has previously reported that the Cupertino-based company will bump the iPhone’s display size half an inch.

Apple prognosticators expect the company will release the sixth-iteration of the iPhone this fall but until then expect more rumors about what’s in store for the company’s signature device.

Do you believe these images show the real iPhone 5? Tell us what you’re expecting from Apple’s new iPhone in the comments.

Source: Mashable

Nokia Knocks Lumia 900 Price Down to $50

Nokia has cut the price of its flagship Lumia 900 phone in half just three months after it hit the U.S. market. The Windows-based smartphone now costs $49.99 with a two-year contract from AT&T.

The new price took effect Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reports. Nokia’s and AT&T‘s website have both been updated to reflect the change.

The price cut comes less than a month after Microsoft unveiled its next-generation mobile OS, Windows 8 — and with it, news that Lumia 900 phones will not be getting the upgrade. If the phone wasn’t selling well before that bit of news dropped, it’s likely selling much worse now.

A Nokia spokesperson told the Journal that the move was “a normal strategy that is put in place during the life cycle of most phones.” He pointed out Samsung’s Galaxy S II experienced a similar price drop in that timeframe.

Sales of the Lumia 900 initially appeared to be strong; the device was listed as the bestselling smartphone on Amazon the week following its release. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive.

The Finnish company has had a tough quarter. Last month, Nokia announced it will close its factories in Finland, Germany and Canada, and lay off up to 10,000 workers before the end of 2013. The company reports second-quarter earnings on Thursday.

Mobile phone separation anxiety?

Fears and superstitions creep up each Friday the 13th, but there’s a new phobia developing worldwide that has caused anxiety and stress for many: mobile phone separation.

In fact, the fear of being without your mobile phone — also called nomophobia — affects a large portion of the population, according to new data highlighted by T-Mobile in the below infographic.

A recent survey commissioned by T-Mobile and conducted by Kelton Research found that 25% of respondents would rather leave the house without a credit card than a mobile phone and 29% would prefer to be without cash. Nearly half of Americans said they miss their phones within an hour of being without it.

Some are so addicted to smartphones that 11% would rather leave home without wearing pants, and 63% would climb through the trash to find a lost mobile device. About 25% said they would physically fight a thief to get their phone back.

However, men believe they can last longer without their mobile device than women, saying they can go two hours longer than females before they really start to miss it.

Do you have nomophobia? How long do you think you could go without a mobile device? Let us know in the comments.

Source: Mashable