Items tagged with Korea
When it comes to mobile broadband speeds, Korea is doing quite well. While Sprint is boasting about 50-60Mbps that will be in five U.S. cities by the end of the year, Korea’s SK Telecom says that it already has 300Mbps LTE ready to roll. (Well, sort of.) The technology involved is a three-band aggregation, just like Sprint’s Spark initiative, and with the 20MHz and two 10MHz bands together, SK Telecom says it can offer 300Mbps LTE speeds. There are some hurdles to overcome first, though, including getting global standardization and getting hardware makers to develop the needed chipsets and devices. Even so, SK Telecom expects to have the service commercially available by the end of...
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When it comes to wireless Internet, fast enough never truly is. And while it took a good amount of time to graduate from 3G to 4G, the next leap may happen sooner than any of us expected. SK Telecom has this week launched the world's first commercial LTE-Advance network, and Samsung has launched a new Galaxy S4 smartphone to fully take advantage of the speed. Just a couple of years after LTE was launched, LTE-A promises speeds of up to 150 Mbps, which is two times faster than that of LTE, and 10 times faster than 3G network. For instance, LTE-A users can download an 800MB movie in just 43 seconds. With the commercialization of LTE-A, the company expects to further improve customer satisfaction...
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Here's an interesting tale: Google's executive chairman is about to go on a trip. But it's not just "any" trip, and it's hardly a vacation. He's about to travel to the Hermit Kingdom -- a place that's all but impossible to venture to unless you're a highly regarded political figure, or a member of a limited tour group where the guide never lets you out of their site. The destination? North Korea. One of the most disconnected, isolated societies in the world is about to be visited by the executive chairman of a company that excels at providing a near-limitless amount of free information. Culture clash? Indeed. Eric Schmidt will be riding shotgun alongside New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, on what's...
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Samsung took over as the top cell phone brand in 2012 (shipping 29% of all cell phones and 28% of all smartphones worldwide) and presumes to continue its upward trajectory in the new year. According to the Korea Times, Samsung believes it will sell 510 million handsets in 2013. The company estimates that it shipped 420 million devices this year--288 million in the first three quarters of 2012 with a sizable, yet-to-be-confirmed holiday bump-- which works out to a year-over-year sales boost of 20%. KT’s sources assert that about 390 million of those devices will be smartphones, while 120 million will be feature phones. Samsung will manufacture its phones in factories in Korea, Vietnam, China,...
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Samsung has unveiled a tweaked version of the Galaxy Note 10.1 in its native South Korea, and among the minor upgrades is the addition of LTE capabilities. The (translated) release specifically mentions Voice over LTE (VoLTE) as well as simultaneous voice, video, and data as ideal use cases for the new LTE feature, so it’s apparent that Samsung has its eye on those features. The ability to make a call on a giant tablet is interesting, because although it’s always a nice feature, there are inherent ergonomic problems due to the form factor. Still, an LTE-equipped Galaxy Note 10.1 is a thing to be desired. Other new features include Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, a multi-screen multitasking...
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According to Korean news sources, 11 people, including one prominent former Samsung engineer, have been arrested for allegedly selling secrets to one of Samsung's rival firms. The report states that a 46-year-old former SMD researcher, whose name is being withheld, was paid ~$170,000 "from the competitor in exchange for secret data on the so-called "small mask scanning" technology involved in building active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays for large televisions. Until now, AMOLED displays have mostly been used for small smart devices." The complaint indicates that the researcher took a job with the rival firm with the expectation that he'd be rewarded with an executive position...
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Only a few days after a Korean paper said the new iPhone would be out in April, a Goldman Sachs analyst chimed in on the annual update to the iPhone, saying it would be out in (ta-da) June, when Apple usually release updates to its popular app phone.Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Robert Chen, fortunately, not talking about credit default swaps or derivatives, so we can try to trust him, said the new iPhone would have a better camera (not much of a stretch of the imagination there) and a touch sensitive case, much like Apple's Mighty Mouse. He added that the phone would go into production in April and be available to consumers in June or July, much as prior models have been.Of course, people...
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The Korea Times said on Tuesday that a new version of the iPhone is coming to KT, Apple's partner in Korea, in April. They called the device the 4G iPhone, but it's unclear if the paper meant "fourth-generation" rather than 4G wireless capability.One phrase stood out, however: "at the earliest." That means the timing could be later, and still not run afoul of the story being incorrect. Apple has, in the past, said that the iPhone runs on annual updates, and pushed the new versions out in the middle of the year.However, the story goes on to say an early release is being planned because of the sheer number of Android devices that are being released, which, although not anywhere near...
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While many have griped, complained (you name it) over the sad state of U.S. broadband, particularly when compared with other countries, some have said it's all a bunch of "hooey." A report released by economic consulting firm LECG, commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks would tend to agree with that, putting the U.S. at #1 in broadband --- with caveats. This placement assumes you use the so-called "Connectivity Scorecard," which measures a number of items unrelated to broadband as part of its ranking system. If you look at the report (.PDF), you can see on page 39 the methodology followed in the rankings. Some of the questionable inclusions: Monthly SMS usage per capitaAdjusted software spending...
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Not even a week after Britain promised to provide its entire nation with broadband access over the next few years, South Korea has introduced a similar plan in order to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. According to a new plan from the Korea Communications Commission, it's looking to improve the nation's already stellar IT infrastructure. The ambitious initiative is calling for total spending of 34.1 trillion won ($24.6 billion) over the next five years, with the Korean central government putting up 1.3 trillion won and the remainder coming from private telecom operators. Obviously, a plan such as this is pretty wide ranging, though the highlight change is that "high-speed Internet and wireless...
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It appears that the military brain trust over in Korea might have seen Iron Man or Star Wars: Clone Wars too many times. It's difficult to say exactly where the inspiration came from for their concept for a new battle-dress uniform (BDU), but it definitely looks like something right out of the realm of science fiction. The Korea Times reported on the concept design for a new BDU and related gear that Korea's Agency for Defense Development (ADD) will allegedly start developing next year. "The agency has completed studies on the concept of the future combatant uniform and equipment... From next year, we plan to begin developing related technology and equipment after getting approval from...
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According to an article from Engadget, Europe and South Korea are developing a "Robot Ethics Charter" in order to govern the manufacturing and use of robots to including ethical standards. If this wasn't already sci-fi enough, guess where the a great deal of inspiration for the charter is being found? Isaac Asimov's "three principles", a concept from his 1942 book I Robot, is being used as inspiration for both Europe and S. Korea's charters. In the end, when the robots rise, it won't be a cool slathering of mud spread across your thermally trackable meat sack which saves you; it'll be a manifesto. Europe's version is expected next month,...
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There have always been benchmarks you watch to gauge the march of technology --Processor speed, number of channels available on cable, maximum screen size, etc. I must have fallen asleep for ten minutes, because they're putting 10 megapixel cameras into phones now. Camera Phone Plaza has pictures of the little wonders: "Samsung made a press release today in which announced the world's first super camera phone, the Samsung SCH-B600. The handset features an amazing 10 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom, 5x digital zoom and a flash unit. The SCH-B600 also has a LED autofocus that automatically determines the distance and utilizes the appropriate focus setting." The camera phones are exactly...
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