Apple to rest of world – we’ll let you use our nano sim patents free, for a price

This week the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI for those of us who prefer something less tongue twisty) meet to decide what will become the next sim card standard, the nano sim.

A micro sim card, the nano sim card will be even smaller

The current sim cards, and micro sim cards, used are limited in how much information they can hold and in what features they offer. There are a couple of competing solutions being proposed for this weeks vote and one is from Apple who have apparently sent a letter to ETSI saying they will allow their patented design for a nano sim card to be used royalty free….for a price.

Yes there is actually a catch, in order to allow phone manufacturers to use their designs for what would, if Apple succeed, become the new sim card standard, Apple expect other manufacturers to let them use their standard essential patents for free.

Florian Mueller who broke the news on his blog after being shown a private letter sent to the institute from an Apple lawyer said Apple would grant  “royalty free licenses to any Apple patents essential to nano-SIM, provided that Apple’s proposal is adopted as a standard and that all other patent holders accept the same terms in accordance with the principle of reciprocity”.

What Apple are doing is essentially shrinking down already existing technology, and then trying to use that as leverage to avoid paying licencing fees to their rivals when Apple uses their rivals technology.

So for simply scaling down existing technology, the sim card, Apple expect to be allowed to use everyone elses standards essential patents without paying for them, or to use their more obtuse phrase “in accordance with the principle of reciprocity”. Nokia have weighed in on the debate over this saying:

“we don’t believe it represents a significant reduction in size. We believe that in practice it would mean it was just different from micro SIM, rather than smaller, which could be a barrier to broad adoption as an alternative to micro SIM, potentially leading to fragmentation”.

Apple seem on the surface to be offering their technology for free when in reality what they are actually doing is slightly modifying someone elses work (if Nokia are right then Apple are essentially just shrinking the existing sim card design) then trying to get this accepted as a standard so they can then demand others return the favour by allowing Apple use of their more important, and more valuable, patents.

Indeed Nokia went so far as to say that Apples design could lead to people trying to insert it in normal sim or micro sim card slots and causing damage to the card or phone, which would suggest that Apples design is indeed little more than a shrinking down of current technology, in which case asking for free use of others patents in return seems more than a little cheeky.

iPhone to copy Galaxy S2? – Korean media say yes, meanwhile new iPad is hot topic

According to an un named industry source quoted in a South Korean newspaper today the next iPhone is to have a 4.6 inch retina screen.

The iPhone

Apples biggest Android rival, Samsung, use this exact size in their Galaxy S2 smartphone and while it makes sense to use a bigger screen it’s something that the late Steve Jobs refused to do, and something that could cause a back lash from some iPhone fans used to the smaller screen it has had since its first release back in 2007.

According to Reuters Apple are already placing orders for the new 4.6 inch screens but Reuters say this is again based on a Korean report and with no named sources it’s simply rumour. The iPhone could get a larger screen, in fact if it doesn’t I would say it’s going to be causing problems for itself as many new phones use larger screens and people are finding that larger screens can be a good thing, but whether Apple would jump to the exact size of their nearest rivals flagship product is something I doubt not least because it would garner yet more accusations of copying (after they allegedly “borrowed” Androids notification bar for iOS 5) and the current iPhone apps would look awful on a much larger screen.

On the plus side though it would allow the use of larger more powerful processors and gpu’s, the smaller form factor currently used restricting the iPhone a little, but again there is a downside and that is battery life which would suffer. Will the new iPhone really have a 4.65 inch screen?

Unlikely, but a four inch screen is a more probable option and one which would be easier for die hard fans of the traditional iPhone form to accept, although once Apple do release a large screen iPhone you can be sure that those fans who currently criticise larger screens will be the first to extol their virtues.

Meanwhile after a noticeable lack of queues for the new iPads (most people bought them online this time round) a mini debate has begun over the popular tablet.

The new iPad

The new iPad has a 70% more powerful battery but, conversely, uses 150% more power than before thanks primarily to its new screen and as a result a large number of users have complained about the fact that it gets uncomfortably warm. US consumer site “consumer reports” found that in their tests it reached a temperature of 116 degrees Fahrenheit when plugged in and 113 degrees when unplugged and this has led to a number of technology sites (and even some newspapers) claiming it’s a big problem.

While not a fan of Apple I think personally that people buying the new iPad should cut Apple a little slack. The screen is a lot better than before and with such a high resolution (and of course with an excellent quad core gpu) it was never going to have the same battery life as its predecessor did.

It’s not uncommon for phones, tablets etcetera to heat up when charging, in general the more powerful a device is the more heat it will generate which is why laptops will always be physically warmer than tablets for example. The truth is that yes it gets warm, but those who aren’t out to scare potential buyers or simply bash Apple at every opportunity freely admit its warm – but not hot. It will not burn you, it will not cook your hands or legs or help you fry eggs on a camping trip should you forget your stove…it may get warm after a while but that is all.

Neo saves the day? – court questions validity of slide to unlock patent

Apples second slide-to-unlock case against Samsung has been temporarily stopped by the German courts until the patent office there, who it turns out are currently re-examining the patent in question, reach a conclusion as to whether or not the patent is invalidated by examples of prior art.

The prior art in question appears to be the NeoNode N1M I mentioned in a recent post (I suggested it invalidated the patents, not knowing that Samsung had previously reached the same conclusion and used it in their defence in the now halted German court case) which uses the same slide to unlock action Apple patented, but did so before Apple patented it as their own invention.

Judge Andrea Voss has said that the court in Mannheim is unconvinced of the validity of Apples intellectual property right in the case, this is good news for Samsung and Android in general as it could potentially lead to Apple losing the case itself and / or the patent being revoked, at least in Germany.

If the patent were revoked it could be a good thing for any other cases involving slide to unlock patents elsewhere in the world as it could then be shown that prior art indeed invalidated the patent in question in other countries (a Dutch judge ruled last year that the European patent was too obvious and invalidated by prior art being filed just months after the NeoNode had already been released) and so this could be used to strengthen a defence against what many already see as a patent that should never have been granted.

For those who want more specifics the patent is actually known as a utility model because it’s essentially a fast tracked patent, one that goes through quicker because if it is later used in a court case you as patent holder bear the burden of proof. Even if the patent in question were revoked it has no direct bearing on the same patents that Apple own in America, however it would be easier to defend against them were there cases showing other countries considered the same patented “invention” to be invalid due to examples of prior art.

Ripped off? – why key Apple patents used against Android should never have been granted

One key patent used by Apple in the ongoing patent war against Android, started by the late Steve Jobs who vowed to destroy Android no matter what the cost, is US patent number 7978176. It covers a feature used by most modern mobile phones, that of changing the view on a touchscreen phone from portrait to landscape depending on its orientation.

The specific part relevant to Android reads “The method includes displaying information on the touch screen display in a portrait view or a landscape view based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers.”

The MyOrigo smartphone could auto rotate its view four years before Apple invented the idea

It was filed for in December 2007 and means that any touchscreen phone that can change its viewing mode from landscape to portrait, based on the input of one or more accelerometers, is violating their patent. And Apple have used this patent against the makers of Android devices.

Under US law a patent is not supposed to be granted if the invention being patented was “known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country” before the date of the application.

So if a touchscreen phone existed prior to December 2007 that used an accelerometer to automatically alter the phones view based on input from that accelerometer, and this device is known about in the US before 2007, then prior art exists and the patent should not be granted.

In 2003 the MyOrigo smartphone, a touchscreen phone, was unveiled by its creators and shown to the world. It could auto rotate its view based on data from an accelerometer and was reported in a number of American publications, and on American web sites, four years before Apples application was made and yet somehow the US patent office still accepted and granted it, making Apple the legal rights holder to that technology….technology first seen on a non Apple device four years before Apple claim to have invented it.

But perhaps the best known patent used against Android to date is the “slide to unlock” patent. In Europe it is patent EP1964022 (filed in 2006) and in America the relevant patent is number 8,046,721 (filed in 2009). You can skip the next two paragraphs if you’re not interested in the relevant text from sections of those patents.

The key part of the European patent states “In some embodiments, a method of controlling an electronic device with a touch-sensitive display includes: detecting contact with the touch-sensitive display while the device is in a user-interface lock state; moving an image corresponding to a user-interface unlock state of the device in accordance with the contact; transitioning the device to the user-interface unlock state if the detected contact corresponds to a predefined gesture; and maintaining the device in the user-interface lock state if the detected contact does not correspond to the predefined gesture”.

Android, the target of a destructive patent war that contines to rage on, is an open source operating system.

The key part of the US patent states “The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device. The device displays one or more unlock images with respect to which the predefined gesture is to be performed in order to unlock the device. The performance of the predefined gesture with respect to the unlock image may include moving the unlock image to a predefined location and/or moving the unlock image along a predefined path. The device may also display visual cues of the predefined gesture on the touch screen to remind a user of the gesture”.

Both US and Europe have similar understanding of prior art, but basically if a pre existing device uses the action of sliding a finger over a touch screen to lock or unlock the device and it existed before the earliest filing (in 2006) then these patents also should be invalid.

Watch the video below and skip to four minutes in. You’ll see some reviewing a touch screen phone in 2005, using the exact method of unlocking it that Apple ‘invented’ a year later and later used in the iPhone (which came out two years after the phone shown in the video).

In at least one court case the court in question did see sense and say the unlock patent was too obvious to be patentable but the patents themselves still stand and they are still allowed to be asserted. Why?

I am not a patent lawyer but I have spent a lot of time reading the specifics on what constitutes prior art in a patent application case and while the above examples are the earliest I have found to pre date the Apple patents it is an easily proven fact that they existed before the relevant Apple patent applications were made and should serve as prior art.

One can only hope that sooner or later such erroneous patents will be discounted but for now, despite examples of prior art, Apples excellent lawyers seem to have the ear of the patent offices.

Cinema in your pocket – Samsung unveil Android phone that’s a mobile cinema

Samsungs latest Galaxy phone is sure to find favour with film fans when it launches later this year.

Samsungs new Galaxy Beam projector phone

The Android powered smartphone has eleven times the ram of rivals such as the iPhone 4S (a staggering 6 gigabytes to be precise, more than any other phone and even more than most laptops), a dual core Cortex A9 cpu running at 1 gigahertz, is fully compatible with dlna enabled products (a must for film fans with dlna enabled tv’s or home servers) and its most amazing feature….a high definition video projector.

Yes, you read that right, the projector is built into the top of the phone and can project 720p high definition video onto a surface of up to fifty inches (just over four feet) with just the press of a button. Quality is very good, certainly more than suitable for watching a film or two when you’re bored, with a crisp clear picture as can be seen in the following video.

Some confusion surrounds the actual output of the projector, Samsungs official literature states 720p output but some sources say the actual resolution of output is 640 by 360. The way phones work is that you can show high definition content on phones with smaller resolution output by using a high screen density, this is how the phone I use, for example, can play 1080p videos that still look good. Whether this principle can be applied to projector output I don’t know, if it can then this may explain the discrepancies between official and unofficial figures. What is for sure is the picture quality is very good for a projector, more so when you realise that quality is coming from a smartphone.

Back to that six gigabytes memory, and a little caveat that people seem to miss is that some specifications are subject to change prior to its release in July. The projector itself is unlikely to change, that’s the most important feature, but you should expect the memory to be one gigabyte and not the six that press reports suggest.

Why? Simply because one gigabyte makes the phone much less expensive to produce than six, an Android phone can run nicely on one gigabyte (for example Samsungs flagship phone the Galaxy S2 has one gigabyte of ram) and with a planned retail price (sim free) of £385 putting such a huge amount of ram as six gigabytes in it would dramatically increase production costs.

Front view of the Samsung Galaxy Beam

What is a concern is that not long after the first prototype was revealed in 2010 Apple patented the idea of a phone using a pico projector, just as the prototype and the now production ready models do. Given Apples history of patenting things and then using these against Android device makers, and their bitter lawsuits against Samsung in particular over their Galaxy range, it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple wait for its release and then proceed to sue Samsung for using their idea even though it isn’t actually Apples idea.

Of course if that happens hopefully the court involved would be intelligent to take the original Galaxy Beam protoype, an actual device being shown the month before Apples patent application was made, as a case of prior art but it is a shame that, when great mobile tech is unveiled using Android, one of the first things on many minds is now “when will Apple sue it”?

 

Back to the Beam and although its specifications, other than the projector and 6 gigabyte ram, are already pretty common for higher end phones this is definitely the phone to get if you are a film fan. The projector has a fifteen Lumen rating, meaning that it is bright enough for you to watch films outside during the day and not just tucked away in the dark and with Samsung planning a docking station it’s possible you could connect it to a surround sound system for a night in watching films but one thing’s for sure, this phone is a keeper.