Star S10 Smartphone companies often boast how much better their devices' cameras are than those of their rivals

Star S10 Smartphone companies often boast how much better their devices' cameras are than those of their rivals, but scientists may have them all beat—they can spot single viruses with a new lightweight, portable imaging system that attaches to smartphones. The power to see single molecules with the system might arrive soon, experts added.

Smartphone shipments surged to a record high in the third quarter, but Apple continued to lose ground as lower-cost devices proliferate in emerging markets. Research firm Strategy Analytics on Monday evening issued its smartphone figures for the third quarter, suggesting that total global shipments jumped 45% annually in Q3 to a record 251 million units, topping a quarter-billion for the first time ever. That monstrous figure was driven largely by Samsung, which shipped an estimated 88.4 million smartphones, up from 56.9 million units in the third quarter last year, to capture a record 35% of the global market. According to Strategy Analytics’ numbers, Samsung now ships nearly 1 million smartphones each day.
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There is widespread misunderstanding regarding curved displays. They aren't simply a marketing gimmick as has been widely reported – we’ll show that curved screens substantially improve the display performance. In fact, curved screens are a major and very important new display technology innovation, particularly for handheld Smartphones.

The curved Galaxy Round performed better than the flat Galaxy Note 3, but with some minor bending of the flexible display I was able to further reduce ambient light that was washing out the screen, including an annoying overhead table light. Flexible displays will have lots of applications, but a very important one is improving screen visibility by subtly bending away distracting light reflections. Curved is great but bendable is even better

Introducing a slightly curved cylindrically concave screen is a very important and major innovation in Mtk6589 phone Smartphone display technology – very far from being a marketing gimmick as has been widely reported. The Galaxy Round screen curvature is very subtle, just 0.10 inches away from flat, which is similar to the slight curvature in a handheld magnifying mirror. But that small curvature is the key to a series of optical effects that result in significantly reducing interference from reflected ambient light by a large factor.

Even more interesting is that Samsung has also made that same OLED display into a completely free standing flexible display, so I was able to compare three essentially identical 5.7 inch 1080p OLED displays in their flat, curved, and flexible display formats side-by-side. This article is my analysis of curved and flexible displays for Smartphones

Apple, which Strategy Analytics still measures by end-user sales while other companies are measured by channel sales, posted its September quarter results on Monday afternoon and stated that it sold 33.8 million iPhones. While that impressive figure represents 26% growth over the same quarter last year, 45% overall growth means Apple fell further behind Samsung where global market share is concerned. As a result, Apple’s market share dropped to 13% from 16% in the year-ago quarter.

The entire system, housed in a casing made with a 3-D printer, weighs roughly as much as a cup of uncooked white rice. In experiments, the system could spot particles as small as roughly 100 nanometers. (One nanometer is one billionth of a meter.) The researchers found it could also detect single viruses such as human cytomegalovirus, which can endanger the lives of patients with weakened immune systems and measures about 150 to 300 nanometers in size. HIV, rabies and influenza are similarly large viruses. "It is the first time that single nanoparticles and viruses have been detected using a hyundai x900 cellphone-based field-portable imaging system," says Aydogan Ozcan, an electrical engineer and bioengineer at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ozcan and his colleagues described their setup in the October 22 issue of ACS Nano.