New Snapdragon chipsets are coming out for lower-end devices, which could potentially open new possibilities for this range. The Snapdragon 200 and 400 chipsets were officially announced and target entry-level and mid-range markets. These two chipsets might just set the benchmark for chipset performance.

The Snapdragon 200 is a quad-core chipset with a speed of 1.4Ghz per core on an Adreno 203 GPU. It can also accommodate 8 MP cameras; can support multiple SIM cards and playback of HD videos, among others.

On the other hand, the Snapdragon 400 has two options for the CPU. One is dual-core CPUs at 1.7Ghz per core with and the other, quad core CPUs running at 1.4Ghz per core. According to the Snapdragon blog, its Adreno 305 GU will support 3D gaming, wireless streaming, better camera features than the Snapdragon 200 can support and it will enable faster web browsing. It is also purported to contribute to better battery life.

Qualcomm will truly make technology more affordable for these ranges of devices.

Qualcome Blog Link

A new Tegra 4 mobile processor is coming its way as announced by NVIDIA and it should hit the smartphone market very soon. The Tegra 4i was also previously-and "secretly" referred to as Project Grey and it is said to preserve battery life with a fifth core!

Furthermore, the processor is more compact than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and the processor is clocked at 2.3GHz on an ARM's R4 Cortex A9 chip. This is really one processor to watch and it makes us wonder which smartphone will be able to use it first.

This high-performance phone processor will truly up the ante on smartphone performance and it will somehow be a leveling factor for more expensive phones. In addition, the Tegra 4i also supports 4G LTE with its i500 LTE modem, so no need to worry about the lack of it thereof. Smartphones can't get more exciting than this.

Source: NVIDIA

Unlocking is highly beneficial both to phone buyers and sellers because the device goes up in value when it becomes unlocked. This gives the phone owners various choices, wherein they can decide which carrier to use with their phones. Most of the phones sold in the country today are locked devices and there is a petition going on that calls for unlocking to be legalized.

The Obama administration must respond to this call if the signatures of the petition reach one hundred thousand. As of date, there almost 37000 individuals who have signed the petition and many people may still not be aware of this petition and this is why you should take action now if you do not oppose legalization of unlocking.

Just to help you decide, carrier-locked phones are charged with expensive roaming fees for users who use their phones abroad. Furthermore, you can take advantage of some providers' promo plans if your phone is unlocked. So sign the petition now!

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/01/29/white-house-petition-unlock/

Amateur astronomer Alan Friedman is able to create some remarkable images of the sun by using a WebCam and Telescope. It's not the most complicated of processes, although it\'s not exactly simple, either.  

By using special filters attached to his camera, Friedman captures some of the most lovely details of the Sun's roiling surface. The raw images are colorless and often blurry requiring numerous hours of coloring, adjusting and finessing to tease out the finest details, the results of which hardly resemble what I imagine the 10-million degree surface of Sun might look like.

From his artist statement:

My photographs comprise a solar diary, portraits of a moment in the life of our local star. Most are captured from my backyard in Buffalo, NY. Using a small telescope and narrow band filters I can capture details in high resolution and record movements in the solar atmosphere that change over hours and sometimes minutes. The raw material for my work is black and white and often blurry. As I prepare the pictures, color is applied and tonality is adjusted to better render the features. It is photojournalism of a sort. The portraits are real, not painted. Aesthetic decisions are made with respect for accuracy as well as for the power of the image.

Check out his original images below:

https://alanfriedman.tumblr.com/tagged/sun

Have you noticed that your new smartphone charges up quicker than your old one? You might want to thank Qualcomm and the Quick Charge 1.0 technology, which Qualcomm today announced is in more than 70 Snapdragon-based smartphones and tablets.

The rapid-charging technology can charge your phone up to 40 percent faster than previous generations, Qualcomm claims.

Last week at HTC's Frequencies event, our Chief Marketing Officer Anand Chandrasekher spoke with bloggers about a little-known Qualcomm technology which is designed to dramatically decrease the time it takes to charge the battery in a mobile device. We call this rapid charging technology "Quick Charge 1.0."

Qualcomm will release further details about Quick Charge in the coming weeks, but has listed all of the devices that currently feature the technology on its blog page. Check it out to find out if your handset is one of them.

Source: Qualcomm Blog