Articles tagged "Counterclockwise"

We traced the “Gigahertz wars” in a previous Counterclockwise article. It veered off into counting CPU cores because mobile chipsets hit a wall, just like desktop CPUs did a decade earlier. It’s a simple, but unforgiving equation – increasing the...

Phones have had rotating controls since the early days. In the 19th century, if you wanted to call someone, you had to crank a handle (it generated the electric pulse that rung the bell of the other phone). In the 20th century, there was the rotary...

Back in 2007 a certain CEO got annoyed that the screen of his prototype phone got scratched up in his pocket. So, mere weeks before unveiling it, he decided to swap the plastic cover of the screen for chemically-strengthened glass. Plastic was...

A couple of years ago we looked at the ever shrinking bezels and the rising screen to body ratio. While 2016 wasn’t that long ago, things have changed considerably since. The last article stopped at 2016’s Xiaomi Mi Mix. Fitting that 6.4” screen...

Is "Pro" better than a “Plus”? Which is bigger, "Max" or "Note"? Which has the bigger battery? How small is a "mini", anyway? Some of these qualifiers do carry some meaning, e.g. "note" always means a larger device. Larger than the company’s...

The Ericsson T68 is famous for having a camera add-on – one of the earliest examples of a mobile phone that can shoot photos. But modern smartphones have so many features that there are no gaps in their capabilities. Still, add-on companies have to...

The Palm Pre was ahead of its time – it introduced the mobile world to wireless charging. Unfortunately, for all its innovation, the phone didn’t catch up. In fact, manufacturers would ignore wireless charging up until 2013 when they started pushing...

With the dawn of 5G upon us, we wanted to look at how quickly new networks are adopted. The first 2G networks appeared in 1991 then the first commercial 3G networks came alive in 2001 (but wouldn’t reach Europe and the US until 2003). We’ll use...

The infrared port was one of the first ways for a phone to share data locally with other devices. For example, you could sync the calendar from your PC to your PDA over IrDA. It fell out of favor after the bugs and compatibility issues of Bluetooth...

People made many jokes when Microsoft named its third-gen console the "Xbox One". It doesn't make much sense for the third product in the line, but it gets worse - "one" could be the most overused name for a tech product ever. For example,...

Water was never a friend to electronics, but there have always been phones with an adventurous spirit that have protection against the elements. The Benefone Esc! from 1999, famous for being the first cell phone with a built-in GPS receiver, was...

We’re at a pivotal point in the history of mobile screens – OLEDs have finally matched LCDs. Looking at the user interest, OLED-packing phones have climbed up to equal LCD models and are set to surpass them very soon. Back in 2017, we looked at...

Periscope cameras are set to become "the next big thing" in smartphone photography, but they are not exactly new - they've been around for years actually. The history of optical zoom on mobile goes way back. Keep in mind that mobile phones have had...

The Nokia 3310 is a nostalgia machine – people remember it as indestructible, even though it’s not the most rugged phone form Nokia. Similarly, people view the game Snake through rose-colored glasses. In fact, the relaunch of the 3310 leaned heavily...

We’re at a turning point – as of last year, over half of new phone models have a dual camera on their backs. The last time something like this happened was in 2003, except then the switchover was from “no camera” to “one camera”. If you look...

As the first 5G smartphones are nearing launch, we thought it was the right time to trace back the various “Gs” - the generations of mobile telephony and data. Note: we’ll focus on the GSM side of things, GSM and CDMA converged on 4G technology,...

In the beginning, USB could deliver up to 500mA of power at 5V, which worked out well enough for early phones. But as chipsets became faster and screens grew bigger, batteries ballooned in size (we covered the growth of battery capacity in a...

The first flip phone dates back to 1996 – the Motorola StarTAC – that’s essentially the Jurassic Period of mobile phones. And at one point the hottest handset in the world was a flip phone (Motorola again with the RAZR V3). And now they are all but...

Phone makers are not immune to memes - just look at how many brands tweeted out photos of eggs. Another meme popular right now is the "10-year challenge" - posting a photo of yourself from 2009 and from today. Let's see how far phones have...

Sliders are experiencing a resurgence as the form factor has found a new use. In the early days it was used to make a phone smaller and protect the keypad from accidental presses (by putting the keypad on a slider), today they are used to maximize...