iTWire

Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders have been urged to give a ‘cloud first’ consideration for every project on a application-by-application basis, as a new survey finds that is currently only the case for a minority of CIOs.

The New South Wales Department of Justice has contracted IT services provider ac3 to undertake its move to a complete ‘X-as-a-service’ model as part of its migration to the GovDC environment.

Cisco's Australian operation is to support STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) training for more than 100,000 school and tertiary students.

All-flash storage vendor Violin Memory has appointed Michael Burnie as country manager for Australia and New Zealand.

Which bank is enabling contactless NFC payments via Android smartphones to a user base numbering 3.2 million registered users? The bank than can.

National ICT professional services consultancy, FinXL, has recently launched its new ‘as a Service’ offering to meet what it says is growing client demand.

With the increasing use of power intensive apps and mobile broadband, new entrants into the Chinese smartphone space are looking to significantly up the battery life of their products. One such company, Ramos, is teaming up with a leading electric vehicle manufacturer to find the ultimate energy storage source.

In the months leading up to 2015, significant research progress has been made by Chinese battery manufacturers with regard to Graphene Lithium-Ion and Silicon Anode batteries, allowing mobile phone manufacturers to test a new generation of batteries that feature higher energy density than those of previous generations.

According to industry insiders, Ramos, set to release its first smartphone this year, is testing a new generation of batteries that boast up to 60% higher energy capacity than the current state of the art batteries. One of batteries tested by Ramos is produced by Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD.

Ramos, which has been making digital products since 2001 and was Intel’s first partner in the tablet PC market, is collaborating with BYD, Intel and Microsoft. Many of its senior executive team have come to company from BYD.

According to Ramos, the new generation of batteries it is testing have an energy density of about 800Wh/L, a 40% increase over the 560Wh/L common to existing mobile phone batteries, pushing energy capacity to 18.4Wh (3.8V/4850mAh), 60% higher than the current standard of 3.8V/3000mAh. This, says Ramos, will produce significant improvements in stand-by time and battery life, as well as charging speed.

Ramos’ 2014 i9s tablet PC has adopted battery technology provided by BYD, which the company claims has given it a 30-50% increase in battery capacity.

Against a backdrop of extreme competition and slowing growth in global shipments of smartphones, Chinese smartphone manufacturers and component suppliers plan to increase R&D investment in key technology such as CPUs, LCDs, cameras and batteries.

According to TrendForce’s most recent report, as of 2014, six out of 10 of the world’s top smartphone brands (Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi, TCL, Coolpad, and ZTE) come from Chinese manufacturers as Chinese smartphone manufacturers become increasingly competitive in terms of R&D, supply chain management, online marketing, and effectively providing emerging markets with affordable products.

In addition to the six top smartphone manufacturers, lesser known Chinese smartphone brands such as Meizu, VIVO, OPPO, Gionee, and OnePlus are starting to make their presence felt. At the same time, Chinese internet giants such as Alibaba (BABA), Baidu, 360, and Letv have also become increasingly involved in the mobile phone market.