iPad 5 Case: 2013

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Samsung Galaxy S4 uses the latest Gorilla Glass 3 for screen protection

Somehow last night during the announcement we missed the fact that the Galaxy S4 is the first phone to feature Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3. Yeah, I know, it’s not a big thing, but tech geeks are sometimes excited by small things like this.

The Gorilla Glass 3 was announced back at CES, earlier this year, and is marketed as having Native Damage Resistance?. Of course, that’s just a bunch of words marketing people love to use. What matters is that the new glass reportedly provides enhanced scratch resistance, reduced scratch visibility, and better retained strength once a scratch occurs.

According to the manufacturer, the Gorilla Glass 3 is stronger, and is 3x more scratch-resistant than Gorilla Glass 2. Plus some 40% less scratches are visble once they occur.

Source 1 | Source 2

BLU Life One hands-on impressions

With a 5” IPS LCD display, the BLU Life One sits above the entry-level Life Play, and below the phablet-proportioned Life View in the freshly launched smartphone series from the Miami based manufacturer. Given the increasing popularity which the 5” Android smartphones enjoy lately, the dual-SIM BLU Life One is likely to generate the most interest from potential users.

Save for the smaller display, the BLU Life One packs the same spec sheet as its bigger brother which we previewed a couple of days back. The highlights include a MediaTek MT6589 SoC with 1.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU, PowerVR Series5XT series GPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of built-in expandable storage, 5” HD display, and a 13MP camera on the back of the device, coupled with a 5MP unit at the front.

BLU Life One live photos

At a first glance, the BLU Life One does not look as premium as the bigger Life View due the former’s plastic back cover. The frame of the handset however, is made from aluminum, so it feels pleasant and solid to hold.

The measures of the Life One are 144 x 73 x 8.9 mm, while its weight tips the scale at 145 grams. The device is powered by a removable 2,000mAh battery.

BLU Life One sized up against the rest of the Life series

When it hits the shelves, the BLU Life One will boot Android 4.2 out of the box. Like in the case of the Life View, the Life One offers a pleasant Android OS experience thanks to its quad-core SoC.

The BLU Life One is priced evenly with its larger sibling � at $299 unlocked, free of contract commitments. For the money, the latest BLU offering represents good value, thanks to its solid build, good looks, and rich functionality. The BLU Life One, together with the rest of the series will hit the shelves at the end of this month.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Apple iPad’s Photoshop apps now official

Apple iPad’s Photoshop apps now official, go on sale

It’s a small step for Adobe and a huge step for the iPad as the Photoshop-aid tablet apps are finally official and there for the taking (buying).

Adobe Eazel, Color Lava and Nav are online at the Apple App Store for the iPad and could be yours for a total of 10 bucks or $5, $3 and $2, respectively.

It wasn’t all that long ago when the touch SDK for Photoshop was released by Adobe and the iPad seems to be the first to take advantage of it.

The Adobe Eazel is a standalone painting application, which lets you unleash your inner artist on the world and create shapes and figures, paintings, which you can then port to your desktop Photoshop CS5, that scales them to whatever size you wish.

Here’s a promo video, made by Adobe, for it.

Adobe Color Lava lets you mix colors, while Adobe Nav gives the control of your Photoshop application to the iPad for touch navigation.

Check out the promo videos for the Nav and Color Lava, they’re really cool.

If you’re interested, turn on your iPad and go to the App Store. Or just click on these links: Adobe Eazel, Color Lava and Adobe Nav. Keep in mind that all three applications are compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS5, so an earlier version won’t do.

Friday, December 6, 2013

LG announces Smart Video feature

LG announces Smart Video feature, bound to hit the Optimus G Pro as part of a Value Pack upgrade

LG continues trying to steal Samsung’s thunder ahead of tonight’s Galaxy S IV show and has just announced a new software feature dubbed Smart Video.

Destined to hit the Optimus G Pro, Smart Video works pretty much the same way as the Smart pause feature we saw in thoseGalaxy S IV leaks – videos get automatically paused when you’re not looking at the screen.

LG says it has achieved this through advanced eye recognition technology, which recognizes the position of the viewer’s eye. The moment the front-facing camera detects your eyes are not on the display, video playback will be paused.

Smart Video will be joined by the Dual Camera features as a part of something LG calls Value Pack upgrade. It’s going to be offered for the Korean version of the Optimus G Pro next month. The international variant of the smartphone will get the sweet extras later down the pipe.

Here’s the rest of the Value Pack contents that’ll make it to the Optimus G Pro:

Magic Remote Pad and Text Keypad via the QRemote function. These new options
for QRemote work specifically with LG Smart TVs to enhance convenience when
using Optimus G Pro as a remote control for LG Smart TVs.
The Smart LED Lighting outlining the home button of the Optimus G Pro will be
upgraded so users can customize the colors to correspond to their favorite contacts.
The flashing of the LED in different colors will allow users to identify the source of
incoming calls, missed calls, unread messages and emails.
Video Pause/Resume allows the user to stop and start in record mode for one continuous video file.
The first Color Emoticons in an Android smartphone for more personalized text
messages.

Source

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Apple changes and/or ditches Google Maps in iPhoto

Apple changes and/or ditches Google Maps in iPhoto?

During the ~~just~~ iPad announcement yesterday we saw iPhoto migrate from a OS X-only to an iOS-capable app.

And while that on its own doesn’t deserve too much attention, the iPhoto maps integration is curious in that it no longer features Google’s Maps.

In iPhoto for Mac the Map interface (where you see your geo-tagged pics) is definitely Google Maps, but in the iOS version it looks nothing like it.

There’s been a lot of digging into the matter and some users are finding that the map data is actually coming from an Apple server gsp2.apple.com.

John Gruber of The Daring Fireball actually took it directly to Apple, which replied the data is coming from Google Maps.

So there’s no knowing what’s at play here – perhaps Apple is en route to introduce its own mapping service on iOS (and OS X) – they bought maps company Placebase, then and 2010 Google Earth rival Poly9 and finally, 3D mapping firm C3 Technologies in August 2010.

Interestingly, the map data for the Places tab in the Photos app still comes from Google Maps.

Maybe iPhoto is a way of testing out a new layout, maybe Apple (aware of the attention this will immediately attract) changed up the maps UI to send a clear message to Google, maybe collect thoughts on the new map design.

We’ll probably have to wait until iOS 6 to find out.

UPDATE: It seems that Apple is indeed using Open Source Maps but with a custom overlay of their own. This was confirmed by OSM in their official blog. And here’s a tool you can use to see the difference between Apple’s layout, OSM’s and Google Maps’s.

Source | Via

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Highlights of yesterday's Asus event show Padfone Infinity and Fonepad announcements

Highlights of yesterday's Asus event show Padfone Infinity and Fonepad announcements, skimp on the magic

The Asus MWC event yesterday brought the Padfone Infinity and the Fonepad. It wasn’t very well organized for the press, but luckily, you can watch the highlights in the comfort of your own home.

Asus tried to spice the event up with a mini magic show, but that was mostly cut out of the video. What does that say about how engaging the performance was?

The video highlights start off with the AO cloud services, the Padfone Infinity announcement starts at 2:00 and the Fonepad introduction is at 6:30.

You can find our hands-on impressions of the Asus Padfone Infinity and Fonepad here.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Nokia's Terminal Mode connects your car's multimedia system with your smartphone

Nokia’s engineers managed to fully connect your mobile phone to your car’s dash head unit. Thanks to the Terminal Mode you can control the most important phone features directly from the car controls (touchscreen, wheel shortcuts, BT audio).

On the video below Nokia demonstrates some scenarios when a N97 is connected to a specially equipped VW Passat CC.

The concept is simple: the moment you connect the phone to the car, you are able to fully control it from the car’s display and keys. That way you can use it as a music player, voice guided navigation, Bluetooth calls, etc. – everything without bothering to hold your phone and put yourself in a potentially dangerous situation.

Of course all apps that can distract you will be forbidden in that mode.

Nokia is working hard on Terminal Mode, but VW says this technology is far from the mass-production stage. Terminal mode is developed to be compatible with all touch and non-touch controlled smartphones, which it won’t be limited to Nokia phones only.

I’ve met various similar ideas over the past years, but this is the first time when a big manufacturer strives to make it happen. This time I hope Nokia will get the things to the end and change the way we use smartphones in cars.

Source

The Gorilla Glass 3 on the Samsung Galaxy S4 gets knifed

The Gorilla Glass 3 on the Samsung Galaxy S4 gets knifed, coined, and keyed - here's the gruesome video

Do you feel a sadistic pleasure every time you watch a scratch test video of a high-end smartphone? You’ll enjoy this, then.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the first device on the market to sport Corning Gorilla Glass 3 screen protection, which is supposed to be really tough. Well, someone’s decided to finally give it a proper test and has been kind enough to share the resulting video with the rest of us.

Check it out and remember to keep the kids away for this one!

Impressive indeed and at one point it even got me thinking that the guys behind it used some kind of clever trick like a super-thin and industrial-strength screen protector or other means of keeping the display safe. Then again, even though the quality of the video isn’t exactly great, it would have been very hard to mask, so I’m willing to give the Galaxy S4 and its Gorilla Glass 3 screen the benefit of the doubt here.

Via

10 inch Huawei tablet spotted in the wild

10 inch Huawei tablet spotted in the wild, arriving on the MWC 2012 floor

A metallic-clad new Huawei tablet has come out of hiding and posed for a couple of shots.

It’s a 10.1-incher with the HD 16:9 aspect ratio. The software inside will reportedly be Android ICS and an 8 MP camera is mounted on it too.

There’s no word on the chipset used inside. The yet unannounced Huawei slate will have 3G support plus microSD card support.

The cost of the tablet is still unknown but we guess more details will surface come launch time at the MWC 2012 in less than a week.

Thanks Maxxy, for the tip!

Source

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Antennagate continued: Apple removes page with videos of other phones suffering from signal drops

It’s always nice to see that big, successful companies don’t get into a childish “you suck” anti-campaigns… oh, wait. Feeling the pressure of everyone criticizing the iPhone 4 antenna Apple decided to post a few videos demonstrating that other phones have similar issues too.

Apple antenna engineer locked in a dungeon (I’m kidding, this is Apple’s expensive test chamber)

Other companies responded with “don’t try to drag us into your own mess” type of press releases and some clever puns. Well, now it’s over – Apple have pulled the page with the mud slinging videos…

The videos are still available on their channel though now the page just tries to explain what attenuation is, how Apple engineers tested the iPhone 4 in the field, the 100 million dollars worth of testing tech and so on – no mention of the competition.

Well, they could probably skip those pricey test chambers for the iPhone 5, people still bought the iPhone 4 despite the whole “antennagate” thing. Anyway, I’m glad that this whole PR mess is over (to me at least, “other companies’ phones suck too” doesn’t inspire confidence).

I did have quite a few good laughs with the responses of the other companies (like this one). Though it makes you wonder how Apple came to their senses – was it fear of lawsuits or the generally negative fan response to the campaign? Give us your five cents in the comments.

Source

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Facebook keeps in touch 500 million users all over the world

There are nearly 7 billion people living around the globe and as it seems 1/14 of them are part of the largest social network out there – Facebook. The 500 millionth Facebook user registered yesterday, only 6 years and a half years after the website’s launch back on 4 February 2004.

The first thought that crossed my mind was that even if there are so many Facebook accounts, only a small part of their owners actually use them. Wrong! Believe it or not, but, reportedly, 50% of all users login daily. And 100 million of the users (that’s one of every five users) visit Facebook through their mobile devices.

And now, if you’re an employer, you’d better skip that paragraph. Facebook.com certainly is a nice place to spend some time at. But some people are obviously over at Facebook all the time: users spend 500 billion minutes on the site each month. Those are enough to share over 25 billion links to news or blog posts, notes, photos, you name it.

And here is what Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook’s founder and CEO, has got to say about the 500 million user milestone:

If you haven’t visited our Facebook fan page yet, this seems like the perfect moment for that. To take a look at our latest news, reviews and blog posts as status updates to your Facebook account just come by at our official Facebook fan page and become our fan.

P.S. By the way, if you happen to have missed that, there is an upcoming movie about the founding of Facebook. The film (which is actually based on the 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal) is called The Social Network and is expected to be released as of the beginning of October 2010.

Source

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Check out the new Gears of War 3 World Premier Trailer [VIDEO]

This new trailer of the highly anticipated Gears of War 3 came out just yesterday. The game is slated for launch on September 20 worldwide and will be exclusive to the Xbox 360.

I myself have never particularly been a fan of Gears of War. I played about an hour of the first one to realize that it was boring and never bothered with it again. Microsoft never released the second one on Windows so I had fewer reasons to finish the first one. And I couldn’t be less enthusiastic about the third one. But I know a lot of you are so don’t let my ramblings dampen your enthusiasm. Check out the video below. I’m assuming it would be pretty cool if you are a Gears of War fan. Background track “War Pigs” performed by Black Sabbath.

Make sure you check our Christmas list of games to watch out for in 2011.

Source

Sunday, October 13, 2013

YouTube gets a complete design overhaul

YouTube received a more polished design yesterday that focuses the user’s attention on the channels he/she follows and adds a video feed that reminds slightly of a twitter feed. The new homepage consists of a predominating gray background, bigger video thumbnails and a cleaner video watch page.

The redesign comes with a fresh homepage that has a dedicated channel bar on the left, displaying the ones you’re subscribed to, trending, popular, music-oriented and entertainment ones, and ones that YouTube suggests to you based on your viewing activity.

You can also link your Google+ and Facebook profiles to get suggestions based on your friends’ activities. In the center of the new YouTube page you get a video feed from the channels you’re currently subscribed to, displaying videos sorted by channel (and not by upload date).

Back in July YouTube launched the Cosmic Panda experimental design and based on user opinions and recommendations have improved it to launch it as we can see it today. Here’s a video, focused on the new design for your viewing pleasure.

If you haven’t checked it yet, hit their homepage and maybe come back around to offer an opinion – new design yay or nay? Floor is yours, reader.

Source

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Beach Volley is the new update for Angry Birds Rio and teases us with gameplay footage [VIDEO]

Ah, Rovio, you devil you! How much longer are you going to make us wait for the update to Angry Birds Rio? Next week is just around the corner and you are not helping our patience much by teasing us with this fresh gameplay video you’ve just released.

Ah, nevermind, I guess it’s worth the wait. The new video is pretty exciting and shows that Rovio is keeping its word about how fun the new update is. In the gameplay video, our trusty angry birds are on the Rio de Janeiro beach and are giving the evil green pigs a break. Instead, they have their eyes on the nimble little marmosets.

In addition to the new levels, which from the demo video look more interesting than ever, there are new birds! Yes, the new additions to the angry birds team are Blu and Jewell – the two lovebirds from the movie Rio. You can fire them at the vicious monkeys and they fly in a very interesting way.

We can only guess for now how powerful they are and how exactly they are going to be introduced to the story line. We’ll see. Also, there’s a new fruit to be collected – juicy golden watermelons. The new Angry Birds Rio update will be available next week. Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly when, but we’ll let you know as soon as it hits the app stores.

Oh, I almost forgot, here’s the video itself. Enjoy.

Source

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3, Uncharted 3, Prototype 2, Batman: Arkham City, The Elders Scrolls V, INSANE and more announced at the VGA 2010

Lots of gamers dreams came true at the yesterday’s Video Game Awards. Besides the announcements of the already mentioned titles, Resistance 3, Thor, Forza Motorsport, Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat have also debuted with exclusive trailers.

Most of the announced games are scheduled for holiday 2011 release (Diablo III is also rumored for late 2011 launch). I’m sure lots of pockets would turn empty then (including mine) so I suggest we start saving right now.

The conclusion of the Mass Effect series will finally take us to Earth, where the Reapers are destroying the mankind. Commander Shepard must gather an army strong enough to defeat the Reapers and save the Earth. The targeted platforms are PC, X360 and PS3 and the release will be in time for the 2011 holiday season (yes, a good year from now).

Video Games | Mass Effect 3 | VGA 10: Exclusive Debut Trailer HD