We can’t stress this enough however, Sprint’s 3G network has gone to complete shit after they started selling the iPhone. Everyone bought one, and everyone is using one, so the data speeds are terrible. We’re talking surfing the internet at the equivalent speed that a dial up modem delivered back in 1997. If you go with Straight Talk then you’ll be connected to AT&T’s network, which itself has some problems, but it’s much better than anything Sprint currently has deployed. They’re offering the Huawei Ascend II and the ZTE Merit for $99 and $129 respectively. Both run Android 2.3, both have a 5 megapixel camera, and both have a 600 MHz processor. Despite that, they’ll be connected to a better network, and isn’t that what really counts at the end of the day?

But hey, if you know you have good Sprint coverage in your part of the country, or you know friends who have Sprint and don’t have any issues with their service, then $130 for a device running Android 4.0 is pretty damn cool.

[Additional Reading: MobileBurn's hands-on of the Hydro from May 2012.]

Today that changes. According to The Verge, two iOS 6 features that originally were meant for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S are now coming to the 3GS. The first, shared Photo Streams, is something that lets you subscribe to another iPhone’s camera roll. So say there’s a family with two kids and the kids each have a 3GS because it’s cheap. Those children can now subscribe to each other’s Photo Streams so they can see what pictures they’ve taken at school. They can also subscribe to their parent’s Photo Streams should they want to see what Mom and Dad do at work.

The second feature, VIP Mail, is basically an email filter that shows you only messages from people you have on your VIP list. So say you want to see everything from your partner, your family, and the colleagues you’re working with on a specific project. Put them all on the VIP list and you’ll only see emails from them.

We wish the iPhone 3GS was getting more, but hey, these features are welcome for a phone that was launched in the summer of 2009!

If HTC is serious about having China being responsible for a larger portion of their business, then we hope they know what they’re getting themselves into. Think about all the local brands in that market that release devices for a fraction of the cost of an equivalent Samsung or Nokia handset. And when it comes to the high end, Apple’s got that section of the market to themselves.

Where did HTC go wrong? Their devices are great, but they don’t have the distribution channels that the big boys have. That and at the end of the day they don’t really make anything themselves other than Sense UI. Their chips come from Qualcomm, their software is made by Google, so what sort of value are they adding?

What sort of specs will these $50 devices have? The report doesn’t go into details, but they do say that said phones will have 3G connectivity. We’ll confess, if Chinese companies can make a $50 phone that has 3G, WiFi, and GPS, then we’ll simply stop covering feature phones since they’re no longer going to be relevant.

Looking at this news from another angle, how much better will a $100 smartphone be in early 2013 compared to a $100 smartphone on today’s market? Are we finally going to see the death of QVGA screens at the $100 price point? Dare we say it, are we going to start seeing dual core processors at the $150 price point?

We understand that many of you probably don’t care about these budget devices, but you have to think about how far we’ve come during the past five years. You can buy five or six Android smartphones today with the same specifications as the first generation iPhone for the same price as today’s iPhone.

That’s incredible.

Anyway, what does this patent mean for you? It’s additional ammunition that Apple can use against their competitors in court. The report from The Verge has a screenshot of Android that features the disappearing vertical scrolling bar, so how long do you think it’ll take until Apple tries to ban yet another Samsung device from entering the market?

We’d like to point out that Microsoft uses the same sort of scrolling indicator throughout Windows 8, so does that mean Apple will sue Microsoft? We don’t think so, mainly because of the relationship that both companies formed in 1997. In case you forgot, Apple almost went bankrupt, but Microsoft threw them $150 million to keep on chugging along. Think Steve Ballmer regrets that investment? Probably.

As always, we want to stress that this patent stuff is pure bullshit, but we have to cover it since it’s relevant to our industry.

The engineering is best explained in the seven minute video below, but here’s the layman’s explanation: This new chip includes a sensor that tracks how the speaker is performing. The audio that’s outputted is tuned to the performance characteristics of the speaker in question. Instead of simply boosting the audio signal evenly, which could damage the speaker, NXP’s new chip makes sure that only the right frequencies are boosted. So when will we see smartphones on the market that use the TFA9887? That’s a good question. NXP says samples are immediately available, so our gut feeling is that you’ll have to wait until the second half of 2013 to see this chip in retail hardware.

We hope you guys realize that the creation of the TFA9887 has some extremely negative implications. Those assholes who forget to silence their phones during a movie? Their phone is going to be deafening. The people who ride the bus and let their phone ring and ring and ring because they don’t want to answer, they’re going to be up to 5x more irritating. And let’s not forget about the teenagers who think that they have the best taste in music. You’re going to be hearing the theme song to Jersey Shore and Teen Mom at volumes that might drive you to commit an act of murder.

All joking aside, we’re happy that NXP invented this chip because today’s phones aren’t as loud as the phones from a few years ago. Why? Because they’re ultra skinny, so you physically can’t shove better speakers in there.

[Via: All About Symbian]

So now the big question: What’s Samsung going to do with these companies? CSR’s CEO, Joep van Beurden, said this to Reuters earlier today:

“There is a big war going on between the giants of the semiconductor industry like Qualcomm, Intel and Samsung LSI to deliver the complete solution into smartphones. Our team and technology – location and connectivity – is in its own right an extremely important part of that platform, but it is even more important if it completes your product offering and that is exactly what Samsung is doing.”

There you have it. Samsung wants to be able to go to their competitors in the handset business, companies like Apple, HTC, even Nokia, and be able to offer them an integrated solution that will allow them to build a phone in no time. Right now it’s fair to say that the market for these highly integrated chips is dominated by Qualcomm. Most, if not all, of the 4G LTE smartphones sold in the United States use chips that were designed by them.

Samsung obviously wants to enter this space since smartphones have recently begun to outsell personal computers, despite smarpthone penetration being quite low when you look at it from a global perspective.

Translation: Huge market oppertunity.

If you live in Europe or Asia, chances are that you’re not going to deal with this “issue”. Why? Because European operators have figured out that it’s better to invest in network quality and customer service than tinkering with the user experience of the devices they sell. Sure, there may be a few exceptions in the UK, but go to Spain, Italy, or Germany and you’re going to have a hard time finding a device that has an operator logo etched on it. Anyway, back to the news at hand. AT&T told 9to5Mac that:

“We’re working closely with Apple on the new developer build of iOS6 and we’ll share more information with our customers as it becomes available.”

Translation: We’re about to experience a shit storm, so let’s brace ourselves, find a way to explain why we’ve come to the discussion we have, and we should prepare to change our stance.

Now we’d like to remind you that Samsung stopped posting sales volumes during the same quarter last year. What does that mean? They no longer say how many phones they shipped. Sure, they’ll tell you that their flagship device hit X milestone, and that the Galaxy Note has achieved Y sales, but as for the mobile phone division as a whole? Forget about. The same can be said about HTC. Not to worry though, Apple reports how many iPhones they sell, though they don’t break things down by model. And as for Nokia, they’re great. They report volumes for feature phones versus smartphones, and they’ll even tell you how many devices they sold in Europe versus China versus America, and so on and so forth.

Next month, in August, you’re going to see the heavy weight analyst firms compile reports that say which smartphone platform is leading, which company is dominating in terms of profit share, and so and so forth. Usually we quote the big three: Gartner, IDC, and Strategy Analytics. There are some smaller boutique firms out there, but they haven’t been around as long. Plus people think Gartner’s numbers were delivered straight from god, which is pretty hysterical because their forecasts are laughable.

So why is ZTE in such bad shape? The report suggests that the current economic situation in Europe is partially to blame, that and operators in China are delaying rolling out new networks. If you think about it, Nokia is facing the same issues. Quarter after quarter, it’s the network side of the company, Nokia Siemens Networks, that’s having trouble with their finacnes. It seems that the only people who can make money off of selling cell towers are Ericsson and Huawei.

Anyway, what does all this mean for you? Probably nothing since chances are you’re not buying a ZTE smartphone. And as for their networking gear, there’s a high probability that if you’re reading this you’re either in Europe or the United States. Those countries mainly rely on equipment from Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia Siemens Networks. So again, you’re not going to be impacted.

And as for the 12,000 people who are going to lose their job … there’s something to be said about the fact that many of them are based outside of China. That means ZTE wants to focus on their home market, which by the way became the largest smartphone market late last year. Maybe repositioning the company to target their home market will prove to be a good idea in the long term?

So what the hell is “in-cell” all about? Instead of making a screen touch enabled by putting a capacitive layer on top of a display layer, with “in-cell” you basically integrate the capacitive layer into the actual display itself. Now this isn’t anything new. Samsung was the first to do this when they introduced the original Galaxy S in early 2010. Their fancy pants name for “in-cell” is “Super AMOLED”. One year later Samsung introduced “Super AMOLED Plus” with the Galaxy S II, which is basically the same thing, but minus the PenTile subpixel configuration. And what about this year, what screen technology did Samsung introduce for 2012? That’s an easy one, just look at the Samsung Galaxy S III, which has a “Super AMOLED HD” display. Any guesses as to what Samsung is going to introduce in 2013? Probably something called “Super AMOLED HD Plus”.

Anyway, millions of words will be written about the next iPhone. Just you wait.