Daily Archives: November 18, 2011

Orange announced it will launch the Orange San Francisco II, the successor to the award-winning San Francisco smartphone, through Orange shops, Orange telesales and the Orange online shop in late November.

Offering outstanding value innovation, the 3G+ Orange San Francisco II offers everything customers expect from a high-end smartphone.

Building on the success of the Orange San Francisco, the San Francisco II adds a number of innovative features, including HD Voice for clear, crisp call quality, Signal Boost allowing users to benefit from enhanced indoor coverage and Orange Mobile Mail. The handset also features the latest Android gingerbread 2.3 operating system, providing users access to Android Market Place, so they can access thousands of the latest new apps.

The new San Francisco II also includes an improved 800 MHz processor and a 5MP camera – for snapping and sharing quality shots on the move. It also contains a bright, clear 3.5″ WVGA capacitive TFT touch screen, 512 MB of internal memory and a slimmer and more lightweight body – set to build upon the fan base of its popular predecessor.

In addition, several key apps are pre-loaded onto the handset, including: Orange Wednesdays; offering 2-4-1 cinema tickets; Your Orange, allowing you to keep up to date and manage your account, and Orange Contacts Back-up.

The handset also features AGPS, an MP3 player and an inbuilt FM radio to complete the line-up of essentials.

Paul Jevons, Director of Products and Devices, Orange UK said: “The Orange San Francisco II is a fitting successor to the award-winning first model, and offers the latest developments in data, voice and design. We are delighted to be following up on the success of the award winning original with such a full-featured product we expect it to be really popular with consumers in the run up to Christmas”

The San Francisco II will be available exclusively from Orange shops, Orange telesales and orange.co.uk/shop from late November and will be £99 on Orange pay as you go with a £10 top-up and free on 24 month plans of £10.50 per month.

Full specification list:

• Talk Time: 4.5 hours
• Standby Time: 10 days
• Weight: 120g
• Dimensions: 117 x 58.5 x 10.6
• Camera Features: 5 megapixel
• Connectivity: WiFi / Signal Boost / Bluetooth / USB / SatNav
• Music: MP3 / FM Radio
• Network Band: Tri band
• Video: Calling
• Memory: 512 MB / 16Gb Micro SD card supported
• Email: POP3 / IMAP4 / Mobile Mail
• Data Speed: 3G + (HDSPA)
• Operating System: Android
• Version: Gingerbread 2.3
• Other: HD Voice, MobileMail, Orange WiFi, Your Account
• Applications and Features: Orange Maps, Your Orange, Contact Back Up, Mobile Mail, Orange App Store

With the launch of its version 2.2 of SwiftKey X and SwiftKey Tablet X, the company is as close as its ever been to delivering the utopian touchscreen typing experience. A faster, artificially intelligent language engine; the best multi-touch keyboard implementation ever experienced; lashing of UI polish… and that’s without mentioning the incredible boost in language coverage.

This new version of SwiftKey continues to set the standard for phone and tablet communication. It has the most powerful language technology that’s ever been engineered for typing on a touchscreen, coupled with a smooth and polished user interface and an ever-growing suite of great features. Those who haven’t tried SwiftKey yet should be asking why; millions of downloads and one of the world’s highest app rankings are just two reasons the company knows that this technology is here to stay.

SWIFTKEY X and SWIFTKEY TABLET X (v. 2.2 UPDATE)

TOP FEATURES:

Full language localization for major European languages
Typing support extended to 35 languages, including Arabic and Hebrew
New multi-touch framework for faster typing
Prediction/correction boosted by faster, more efficient Fluency engine
Full support for Android 4.0 operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich)
UX enhancements, including better settings menu, alternative character selection and sharing features

LANGUAGES, LANGUAGES, LANGUAGES!

With this release of SwiftKey X and SwiftKey Tablet X v2.2, the company has taken a major leap forward with its language support. For the first time, users who primarily communicate in Spanish, French, Italian and German (and perhaps Portuguese – tbc) will have an end-to-end SwiftKey experience in their native tongue (in addition to English, of course).

SwiftKey also now offers typing support for a grand total of 35 languages, giving speakers of everything from Afrikaans to Ukrainian an unrivaled prediction and correction experience as they type. SwiftKey’s latest supported languages are Arabic and Hebrew, and SwiftKey users are of course able to enable up to three languages at once, for a seamless multilingual communication experience.

Full list of supported languages:

Afrikaans

Arabic

Basque

Bulgarian

Catalan

Croatian

Czech

Danish

Dutch

English (UK)

English (US)

Finnish

French (CA)

French (FR)

Galician

German

Greek

Hebrew

Hungarian

Indonesian

Italian

Kazakh

Norwegian

Polish

Portuguese (BR)

Portuguese (PT)

Romanian

Russian

Slovak

Slovenian

Spanish (ES)

Spanish (US)

Swedish

Turkish

Ukrainian

MULTI-TOUCH FOR SPEED FREAKS: SwiftKey redesigned its multi-touch framework to enable the fastest speed typing and accuracy from a touchscreen keyboard yet. Using all the power of our Fluency language inference engine, users can now type at lighting-fast speeds without accuracy and SwiftKey is able to make sense of their multiple, successive key-presses, offering the world’s best personal touchscreen correction experience. We’ve also added the Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts for typists who prefer these more efficient options.

A FASTER, MORE EFFICIENT ENGINE: The team of SwiftKey engineers have been hard at work making Fluency, the clever language tech that powers SwiftKey’s corrections and predictions, even faster and more efficient. For the end user, this means SwiftKey will operate faster and use less memory, especially on slower handsets. It’s as if we’ve just doubled the MPG of the SwiftKey engine.

UX POLISH TO MAKE YOU SMILE: SwiftKey version 2.2 is the release that’ll make UX fans smile. The company’s made a range of UX tweaks that improve the overall look and feel of SwiftKey X. This includes the ability to adjust the keyboard key height in both portrait and landscape, an improved implementation of our alternative character selection for users who long-press, and a clear settings menu layout. Other UX improvement highlights include full support for Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), an improved menu for sharing SwiftKey with your friends, and a better implementation of the typing heatmap graphic, which shows you how Fluency models your typing accuracy with each key to improve predictions.

Introducing Android 4.0 on Android.com gives a run down on the new Android OS.

“Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is the latest version of the Android platform for phones, tablets, and more. It builds on the things people love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.”

Features include:
1. “Roboto,” Android’s own font

2. Even more live wallpapers

3. Newly-designed lock screen

4. Disappearing homescreen command buttons

5. Tabbed apps/widgets drawer similar to Honeycomb

6. Resizeable homescreen widgets

7. Redesigned foldering capabilities

8. Hardware accelerated 2D drawing

9. Wi-Fi Direct support

10. “Favorites Tray” at the bottom of the screen that travels across the different homescreens

11. Native Screen grab capability (Press Power+Volume Down)

12. Improved notification bar, customizable notifications

13. New Music player notification in tray controls player

14. Improved keyboard

15. Improved typing error correction

16. In-line spell check and suggestion mode

17. Cut/Copy/Paste similar to Honeycomb, but with animated dragging and dropping

18. Speech for text entry has been improved with no delay

19. “Face Unlock” facial recognition for unlock screen (Did not work in demo)

20. New Browser (Includes new tab management feature. “request desktop site” feature, syncs to chrome, save pages for offline reading)

21. New Gmail (New action bar with compose, search, labels, refresh; offline search by default that searches the last 30 days of email)

22. New Calendar with pinch-to-zoom

23. Updated all of the native Google apps: YouTube, Maps, Google+, Google Music

24. Mobile data usage metrics in system controls, allows users to self-limit their mobile data consumption, and track data usage down to individual app level

25. All-new camera app with slider zoom, facial detection, “zero shutter lag” speed, launchable from home screen

26. Photo editing tools in “edit” menu in the camera

27. Native panoramic camera shot, similar to Sony’s “Sweep” panorama

28. 1080p video capture, continuous focus, includes the ability to zoom while recording

29. Incredible new Time Lapse photography feature

30. New tile-based “People app” interface for contacts, very similar to Windows Phone

31. “Android Beam” NFC-based content sharing with multiple ICS phones (Web Addresses, contacts, maps, YouTube videos, app sharing)