HTC would like you to know about the Desire C, a Beats Audio-equipped phone running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Pitched a the lower reaches of the smartphone segment - T-Mobile will be selling the C for £180 on PAYG, for example, or free on a £15.50 per month contract - the handset is based around a 3.5in, 320 x 480 …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections

This topic is closed for new posts.

Tuesday 15th May 2012 21:30 GMT Nick De Plume

How the mighty have fallen

A couple of years ago Desire meant the flagship device.

And I thought HTC was going to simplify its product line - What gives?

0 0
1. Wednesday 16th May 2012 07:13 GMT Richard 84
  
  Re: How the mighty have fallen
  
  Looks more like a new Wildfire to me.
  
  1 0
  1. Wednesday 16th May 2012 07:55 GMT jb72
    
    Re: How the mighty have fallen
    
    You are quite right - the spec makes it a Wildfire.
    
    0 0

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like

End-of-life smartphone? Penguins at postmarketOS aim to revive it

Alpine-based distro runs on old mobiles abandoned by Android and their manufacturers

Liam Proven in Prague Wed 15 Jun 2022 // 11:00 UTC

A Linux distro for smartphones abandoned by their manufacturers, postmarketOS, has introduced in-place upgrades.
Alpine Linux is a very minimal general-purpose distro that runs well on low-end kit, as The Reg FOSS desk found when we looked at version 3.16 last month. postmarketOS's – pmOS for short – version 22.06 is based on the same version.
This itself is distinctive. Most other third-party smartphone OSes, such as LineageOS or GrapheneOS, or the former CyanogenMod, are based on the core of Android itself.

Continue reading
To cut off all nearby phones with these Chinese chips, this is the bug to exploit

Android patches incoming for NAS-ty memory overwrite flaw

Jeff Burt Fri 3 Jun 2022 // 18:06 UTC

A critical flaw in the LTE firmware of the fourth-largest smartphone chip biz in the world could be exploited over the air to block people's communications and deny services.
The vulnerability in the baseband – or radio modem – of UNISOC's chipset was found by folks at Check Point Research who were looking for ways the silicon could be used to remotely attack devices. It turns out the flaw doesn't just apply to lower-end smartphones but some smart TVs, too.
Check Point found attackers could transmit a specially designed radio packet to a nearby device to crash the firmware, ending that equipment's cellular connectivity, at least, presumably until it's rebooted. This would be achieved by broadcasting non-access stratum (NAS) messages over the air that when picked up and processed by UNISOC's firmware would end in a heap memory overwrite.

Continue reading
Hardware flaws give Bluetooth chipsets unique fingerprints that can be tracked

While this poses a privacy and security threat, an attacker's ability to exploit it may come down to luck

Jeff Burt Fri 10 Jun 2022 // 04:17 UTC

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have shown for the first time that Bluetooth signals each have an individual, trackable, fingerprint.
In a paper presented at the IEEE Security and Privacy Conference last month, the researchers wrote that Bluetooth signals can also be tracked, given the right tools.
However, there are technological and expertise hurdles that a miscreant would have to clear today to track a person through the Bluetooth signals in their devices, they wrote.

Continue reading
Microsoft: You own the best software keyboard there is. Please let us buy it

Come back Swype, all is forgiven. Don't you want our money, Redmond?

Liam Proven in Prague Mon 6 Jun 2022 // 11:02 UTC

There are lots of software keyboards for smartphones and tablets alike, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest… However you can't have it.
Last year, Microsoft bought Nuance for just shy of $20 billion, mainly for its voice-to-text tools. Nuance also owned Swype, which it killed off in 2018. Microsoft, meanwhile, also owns Swiftkey, which it still offers.
The Reg liked both. We called Swype "The world's fastest text entry system", and said that Swiftkey's predictive engine was so good it was a "psychic keyboard."

Continue reading
Murena and /e/ Foundation launch privacy-centric smartphones

De-Googled Android phone does the job, has a few rough edges

Liam Proven in Prague Thu 2 Jun 2022 // 07:01 UTC

First Look The /e/ Foundation's de-Googled version of Android 10 has reached the market in a range of smartphones aimed at the privacy-conscious.
The idea of a privacy-centric version of Android is not new, and efforts to deliver are becoming friendlier all the time. The Register interviewed the founder of the /e/ Foundation in 2020, and reported on /e/ OS doing rather well in privacy tests the following year. Back then, the easiest way to get the OS was to buy a Fairphone, although there was also the option of reflashing one of a short list of supported devices.
Now there's another option: a range of brand-new Murena phones. The company supplied The Register with a Murena One for review, with a pre-release version of the /e/ OS installed.

Continue reading
India probes ZTE and Vivo over finances, sparking Chinese protests

Clever asymmetrical economic warfare makes Beijing very uncomfortable

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 1 Jun 2022 // 05:00 UTC

India's government has reportedly started probes into the local activities of Chinese tech companies Vivo and ZTE, prompting a rebuke from China's foreign ministry.
As was the case when Indian authorities seized $725 million from Chinese gadget-maker Xiaomi, the investigations focus on possible irregular financial reporting that may amount to fraud, according to newswire Bloomberg's original report on the matter.
A Bloomberg reporter asked about the state of the investigations at the daily press conference staged by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which produces a transcript of each day's event.

Continue reading
America bucks global smartphone decline with help from Apple

Cupertino's 51% control is why NA market grew while the world shrunk, says Canalys

Brandon Vigliarolo Thu 19 May 2022 // 19:05 UTC

Smartphone markets the world over are in decline, but that news doesn't appear to have reached North America, where the market grew by 4 percent in the first quarter of 2022.
Tech market analytics firm Canalys reported that smartphone manufacturers shipped a total of 39m units in North America in Q1 2022, and most of it was driven by Apple, which saw 19 percent growth in Q1 to reach 51 percent of the smartphone market in the US, Canada and Mexico.
Apple may lead the quarter in terms of shipments and market share, but Google was the growth leader: It added 380 percent to its North American market share from Q1 2021 to Q1 2022. Still, that only brought it to 3 percent of the market, putting it in fifth place.

Continue reading
Leica and Huawei terminate trading agreement amid US sanctions

German optics giant jumps ship to make smartphone cameras for Xiaomi instead

Laura Dobberstein Tue 24 May 2022 // 11:06 UTC

Huawei's long established trading relationship with Leica to integrate the German camera maker's technology into its phones is over, the companies have confirmed.
From February 2016, all Huawei flagships were slated [PDF] to have Leica-developed lenses and branding.
The Reg was generally quite impressed by the combined products over the years.

Continue reading
Safari is crippling the mobile market, and we never even noticed

With web apps, Apple insists on taking the pith helmet

Rupert Goodwins Mon 23 May 2022 // 09:32 UTC

Opinion It has been 14 years since Apple opened its App Store with its shiny shopfront of tempting toys and gloomy back office of rules and rentier revenues, but only now has the proposed EU Digital Markets Act threatened to end Apple's web browser engine monopoly.
And even then, it's only by 2024, when the App Store will celebrate its 16th birthday. Nobody ever accused market regulators of warp speed.
You'd be forgiven for remembering a much earlier monopoly browser decision, that of Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. The courts alleged that was (US v Microsoft Corp) that illegal and Microsoft finally settled in 2001, nine years after antitrust investigations had started into the company. Not that it made much difference, with only one update to Internet Explorer in the next four years due to lack of competition. As the web went wild, browser innovation stalled.

Continue reading
Demand for PC and smartphone chips drops 'like a rock' says CEO of China’s top chipmaker

Markets outside China are doing better, but at home vendors have huge component stockpiles

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Mon 16 May 2022 // 01:07 UTC

Demand for chips needed to make smartphones and PCs has dropped "like a rock" – but mostly in China, according to Zhao Haijun, the CEO of China's largest chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).
Speaking on the company's Q1 2022 earnings call last Friday, Zhao said smartphone makers currently have five months inventory to hand, so are working through that stockpile before ordering new product. Sales of PCs, consumer electronics and appliances are also in trouble, the CEO said, leaving some markets oversupplied with product for now. But unmet demand remains for silicon used for Wi-Fi 6, power conversion, green energy products, and analog-to-digital conversion.
The CEO's "like a rock" comment came in the Q&A section of the call, after previous scripted remarks mentioned a "destocking phase" among SMIC clients.

Continue reading