This fall the smartphone market will witness a rush of new features being incorporated into phones running on iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry, along with major advancements in hardware. BlackBerry and Microsoft are trying to fight their way into the Android and iOS dominated smartphone industry.
With the physical keyboard becoming obsolete, the upcoming BlackBerry 10 software could be RIM’s last chance at successfully reaching out to users of touch screen devices. BB10 comes with a WebOS style card interface, a predictive keyboard and a camera feature like Smart Group Shot to be found in Windows Phone 8.
Microsoft has also announced their developed version for their next smartphone operating system, Windows Phone 8. WP8 will come with an alteration in the start screen, a new live tiles feature and offer to resize tiles. IE 10 will provide complete HTML5 support and faster javascript performance. The camera will offer panoramic mode, the Smart Group Shot feature and the self timer mode. Nokia Maps will replace Bing maps, offering navigation services, offline maps and public transport schedules. The Wallet Hub feature will store your credit card information, passes and tickets, supported by NFC. It supports multicore chipsets, Near Field Communication, screen resolutions of 1280 by 720 and 1280 by 768, removable SD storage, a new graphics processor, in app purchases and enterprise ready features.
Apple’s iOS 6 update mainly introduces Maps App, replacing Google Maps, offering spoken driving directions, traffic information and 3D navigation services and allowing the user to have a life-like experience while navigating through cities. Facebook has been integrated into iOS6 apart from Twitter. The Passbook app will store information about passes, tickets, coupons and loyalty cards, though it is still unclear if it’ll receive NFC support which could enable the device to store credit card information for future mobile payments. It will also offer the services of Siri on the third generation of the iPad, will make it easier to attach videos and photographs to emails, share photos online, offer options to reject calls and use the Safari Reading List feature when offline.
Google too is expected to soon officially make an announcement of the next version, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean which will be launched alongside Nexus devices coming from five manufacturers and a Nexus tablet. Currently, only 7 percent of devices run on Android’s ICS. The main problem plaguing Google is that it does not control their software releases like Apple.
