LG L90 Mid-Segment Smartphone

 

 LG L90's design and build as impressive as technology under its hood

The knock code has for long been used by prisoners to communicate with each other by producing a series of tap sounds. Alphabets, with the exception of K, are visualised in a 5×5 grid, and each letter is represented by two taps. The first tap signifies the row and the second tap tells the column in which the letter is in the grid. Prison authorities couldn’t decipher the code due to the incessant chatter of prisoners using prison walls, bars etc to tap coded messages. When held in isolation this was perhaps the only way that a prisoner could talk to other inmates.
Decades later, Korean electronics giant LG has patented the Knock Code and introduced a striped down version of it in its new entrant to the L Series Collection, the L90. LG in its press release claimed it to be the “most secure pattern unlocking mechanism”. And we put that to the test.
A user can preset a tap sequence on a 2×2 grid and use it to unlock the screensaver. One would presume, the more the number of taps, the more secure the phone is. For all practical purposes we set a 10-tap unlock sequence.

Barring a few minor hiccups — human error — the phone picks the sequence and unlocks without delay. You will get a maximum of three tries before it asks you a security question. The Knock Code wasn’t the only thing that impressed us. The design and build was as impressive as the technology under its 4.7-inch hood. The ergonomics of the L90 are optimal. The charger slot is at the bottom of the phone, power button at left, the volume control is at right and the earphones jack is at top. Its textured rear gives you a good grip and the phone feels lighter than LG’s bundled earphones.

The screen is 4.7-inch in size and it comes with a HD resolution of 960 x 540. All popular video formats — AVI, MP4, etc — are compatible with the device. You don’t need to install one of those popular VLC player from the Play Store for your daily fix of Person of Interest or Game of Thrones. The resolution may seem a bit lacking in pixels but the video output is more than what you

Samsung to Pay $119 Million to Apple in Patent    

Samsung's Galaxy S4, left, and Apple's iPhone 5. Reuters

        SAN JOSE, Calif.— Apple Inc. AAPL +0.19% won a small victory in its latest patent dispute with Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE +0.22% , but largely failed in its attempt to slow competitors to its landmark iPhone.

          A federal-court jury ruled Friday that some Samsung devices infringed on two Apple software patents, but didn't infringe on two others; the judge had earlier ruled that Samsung infringed on a fifth patent.

The jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $119.6 million in damages, far short of the $2.2 billion Apple had been seeking, and less than the $930 million Apple was awarded in an earlier trial in the same courtroom.

The same jury ruled Friday that Apple infringed on one Samsung patent and awarded Samsung $158,400.

The eight-member jury deliberated for three days, following four weeks of testimony.

  

     One legal analyst called the verdict a victory for Samsung. "This amount is less than 10% of the amount Apple requested and probably doesn't surpass by too much the amount Apple spent litigating this case," said Brian Love, assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. "Apple launched this litigation campaign years ago with aspirations of slowing the meteoric rise of Android phone manufacturers. It has so far failed to do so, and this case won't get it any closer."

        

    Samsung, the largest manufacturer of handsets running Google Inc. GOOGL -0.87% 's Android operating system, blew past Apple to become the world's largest smartphone maker. It has rolled out a wide range of phones in varying screen sizes and prices while Apple has maintained a smaller product lineup geared toward high-end consumers.But both companies have been losing market share—particularly to upstart Chinese rivals—while they battle in courtrooms around the world. Two years ago, Apple and Samsung accounted for more than 55% of world-wide smartphones shipments, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. In the first quarter, that fell to 47%.Samsung said Tuesday that quarterly operating profit at its mobile division fell from a year earlier for the first time since 2010. Apple's annual profit fell last year for the first time in more than a decade.

        An Apple spokeswoman said Friday's ruling reinforced its belief that Samsung "willfully stole our ideas and copied our products." She added the company will fight to defend "the hard work that goes into beloved products like the iPhone."

      

       Unlike the earlier trial, which focused on hardware patents, Google played a prominent role in this case. Samsung said Google independently developed many of the software features at the heart of this case before Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007. Samsung said Apple's dispute was with Google, and painted Apple as obsessed with Google—pointing to an email by former Apple co-founder Steve Jobs declaring a "holy war" with the search giant.

       

      Apple has sued other phone makers that use Android, including HTC Corp. of Taiwan, but hasn't gone after Google directly. Google licenses Android free, making it a difficult target for a damages claim. Google designs a few smartphones and tablets, but it doesn't sell many compared with its hardware partners.

Google didn't respond to requests seeking comment.

          In Friday's verdict, some Samsung devices, including the Galaxy Nexus and the Stratosphere, were found to have infringed Apple patents for "data tapping," the feature that dials a phone number included in an email. Some of Samsung's products were also found to infringe Apple's "slide to unlock" patent, which covers the way customers move their finger across a screen to gain access to a device.

The jury also awarded damages based on Samsung's infringement of Apple's "auto-complete" patent, which offers suggestions to customers about how to change or complete a word as they are typing on a keyboard. Friday evening, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh asked the jury to reconsider its verdict on one Samsung phone that infringed on the auto-complete patent, because it awarded no damages to Apple in that instance. The jury will reconvene Monday."It is inappropriate to comment while the jury is still deliberating," a Samsung spokesperson said.The two patents Samsung didn't infringe, according to the jury, were Apple's patents that covered Siri-style search and another for synchronizing data.