Snapdragon 600 based Samsung Galaxy S4 is twice as fast as Galaxy S III and iPhone 5, easily beats HTC One too

Yesterday we got some potentially bad news for Europe – that the Galaxy S4 version in sold in Sweden will use the Snapdragon 600 chipset instead of the Exynos 5 Octa that geeks were hoping for. The same version will be sold in North America. However, then we saw some reassuring benchmarks and now we can add one more.

Primate Labs, makers of the Geekbench app took interest in the Samsung Galaxy S4 performance and made a chart to see how the new Galaxy flagship performs. Using data from a benchmark run by Android Authority, the Primate Labs chart shows that the S4 is over twice as fast as its predecessor.

It also beats the HTC One, which uses the same chipset though at a lower clockspeed (1.7GHz for the HTC, 1.9GHz for the Samsung). As for competition from other platforms, the Apple iPhone 5 scores almost the same as the BlackBerry Z10, both with about half the score of the Galaxy S4.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 used for the benchmark is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600, meaning it uses slightly updated Krait 300 cores compared to the BlackBerry Z10 and the LG Nexus 4. Also note that the Galaxy S4 used for the benchmark has not been running finalized software.

As Primate Labs points out, the iPhone 5 will be updated soon and the iPhone 5S will improve performance and we’ll have to wait and see how it stacks up. But the Z10 is it for BlackBerry, their other model coming this year, the Q10, uses a lower-end chipset.

Shame that we don’t have a score for the Galaxy S4 version with an Exynos 5 Octa – the Cortex-A15 cores are supposed to blow the Kraits out of the water, battery willing.

House of Marley Zion in-ear headphones review

The House of Marley Zion headphones are the young company’s flagship in-ear product. Carrying the heritage of the reggae icon Bob Marley, the earbuds combine earth-friendly, yet premium materials, and eye-catching design, to go with serious sound aspirations and ambition to succeed in today’s ultra-competitive market.

The House of Marley isn’t the typical personal audio brand, endorsed by a music artist. The company’s products support 1Love – the charitable organization of Bob Marley’s family which is dedicated to supporting youth, planet and peace. In a nutshell, the company’s products make you feel good about your purchase well before you have connected them to your device of choice. Let’s find out if they are worth your money by taking a closer look at the Zion earbuds.

Retail package

The House of Marley Zion earbuds come in a compact, cool-looking box, made of recycled paper. Inside it, you will find the headphones, four extra pairs of ear tips, a pouch made of organic cotton, and some booklets.

NVIDIA reveals their Tegra roadmap

At their GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, NVIDIA revealed the roadmap for future Tegra-series processors, among other things. The roadmap highlights NVIDIA’s plans for 2013 and 2014 with two future processors, Logan and its successor, Parker, which continue NVIDIA’s tradition of naming them after the real last names of superheroes.

Logan will be the successor to Wayne, more commonly known as the Tegra 4 chipset, and will be appearing in devices in early 2014. It will feature a quad-core ARM Cortex A15 MPCore alongside a low power companion core. It will also be the first Tegra chip to include CUDA cores, NVIDIA’s solution for parallel computing on the GPU, and will be based on a Kepler architecture, similar to the desktop GPUs that NVIDIA makes.

Logan will also be introducing support for CUDA 5.0, the latest version of CUDA, as well as OpenGL 4.3, which brings new features such as tessellation, computer shaders and geometry shaders over OpenGL ES 3.0.

Next is Parker, which will use the upcoming Denver CPU with 64-bit support and the upcoming Maxwell series of GPU. All the advancements in Logan will be carried forward to Parker. Parker is expected to arrive in devices by 2015.

NVIDIA also showcased an mITX-like board called Kayla, which features a Tegra 3 SoC and a low power Kepler GPU, presumably from Logan. This board is designed primarily for developers to test their applications, specifically for the new CUDA functionality that will be introduced from Logan onwards. Not much details about Kayla are available at the moment.

Zameen.com Launches Mobile Version of its Website

Zameen.com, the leading property portal of Pakistan, has launched the mobile version of its website. The new mobile site will add to the ease of the users and agents while on the go. All this will be exceedingly handy for a country where mobile tele-density is on the rise.

According to the latest estimates, there are over 120 million mobile subscribers in Pakistan with a mobile tele-density of 68.3 percent. This makes Pakistan the 5^th biggest market for mobile phones in Asia. Zameen.com has further expanded its realm and would now be available to every single person carrying an internet enabled handheld device in the country.

Speaking of the internet, there has also been an explosion in the number of internet users in Pakistan. There are almost 30 million internet users in the country and this number is on the rise. To top it all, 2013 might as well be the year when 3G is launched in Pakistan. All of this points towards the fact that the launch of the mobile version of Zameen.com could not have come at a better time.

The high tech mobile version of the website is user friendly and gives the members excellent functionality in terms of searching properties. The mobile site allows users to search properties by city, type, price or area. Users can log into their accounts too and add whichever property they like to their ‘Favourites’ list as well. This is a handy way to bookmark and revisit a listing of your choice for a detailed study later on.

‘With upcoming 3G licensing and fall in prices of Smart Phones, a wave of new internet users is expected in Pakistan, as we have already seen similar internet adoption trends in neighbouring countries. The mobile version of Zameen.com is well-suited for the needs of both new and existing next-generation internet users.’ said Zeeshan Khan, CEO Zameen.com. As per Khan, ‘It’s another milestone for Zameen, which will benefit both the buyers as well as the sellers.’

Lenovo Issues an Update to the ThinkPad Lineup in the T431s

Lenovo has announced yet another laptop in the popular ThinkPad lineup. The new T431s is the successor to the T430s and comes with either Windows 7 or 8.

From the outside, it looks like any other ThinkPad laptop thanks to the boxy & rugged design and the popular TrackPoint. This one, by the way includes a hinge which makes the laptop movable by up to 180 degrees from the center.

The specs

The biggest blow you receive upon checking out the specs of this ultrabook is that it comes without the all-so-important touchscreen which is helpful while navigating through Windows 8 environments. Specs are quite good other than that. It comes with a 14 inch display with resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels. Under the hood you get a 1.8Ghz Intel Core i5-3337U processor, 4GB of RAM and Intel HD Graphics for the starting model, along with a 320GB hard-drive.

Connectivity options are fine too with an Ethernet port, Mini DisplayPort, 2 USB 3.0 ports, SD card reader, Wifi, WWAN, Bluetooth 4.0, 3.5mm headphone jack and 720p HD webcam. A 47WHr battery can power the unit for over 8 hours. All this package comes in a body which weighs about 1.6kg heavy and just over 2cm thick. These were, by the way the specs of the base model. If you are willing, you can get up to 12GBs of RAM, 2.1Ghz Core i7 processor and an optional backlit keyboard.

Talking of keyboards, this keyboard also houses Lenovo’s traditional TrackPoint device (knob describes that better) in the middle. There’s also an improved glass TrackPad which now supports up to 20 gestures and has got no click buttons accompanying it. As said above, it will run on Windows 7 or 8, depending on your preference.

The laptop will be released next month for $949. For that you’re not getting a touchscreen but this offering will give you a traditional Lenovo experience and fine specs. And a laptop which can revolve 180 degrees from the middle.