BlackBerry Z10 coming to AT&T on March 22nd
The lengthy, sometimes aggravating wait for BlackBerry’s latest operating system to come to the United States will soon be over, with the company’s flagship Z10 smartphone set to land on AT&T on March 22nd according to a Bloomberg report. The release comes one week later than was previously indicated, though what’s another week when you’ve been…
For HTC, the time for action is now as sales approach pre-Android levels
The HTC One, which the company unveiled back on February 19th, is likely to be the best Android phone of the first half of 2013. HTC has been in this position before; the HTC One X and subsequent One X+ were both widely heralded smartphones, made from top-notch materials which gave the device a premium…
PSA: Humble Bundle 5 now available; Pay what you want for 6 awesome Android games
The Humble Bundles, which provide bundles of DRM-free cross-platform games, have long been a favorite way for gamers to check out new independent games from indie developers at a price which makes sense to them. That last part, a price which makes sense to them, is key to the Humble Bundle’s operation, which allows gamers…
Android in February: Jelly Bean improves, but over 50% of devices still run a 2 year old OS
Google has released the monthly update to its Platform Version dashboard today. The graphs provide a summary of devices which access the Google Play store in a 14-day period, with the most recent report showing activity for the two-week period ending March 4, 2013. As we’d expect, the number of devices running Android 4.1-4.2 Jelly…
White House supports lifting ban on unlocking phones, now it’s up to Congress
Back in October 2012, the US Library of Congress’s Copyright Office ruled that unlocking cell phones to work on other carriers would no longer be legal under US law. The act of unlocking a phone was previously legal under the law, though the exemptions called for three-year reviews to be enacted, and despite being reinstated…
Samsung teases Galaxy S IV with new video, preps for March 14th launch
We’ve said it before and we’ll likely be saying it for quite a while. If you own an Android smartphone, chances are it’s a Samsung Galaxy. Samsung’s Galaxy S III was the best-selling Android smartphone of 2012, and on March 14th the company will unveil the next in the line of Galaxy, the Galaxy S…
Samsung unveils Wallet application: Blatant Passbook ripoff, or inevitable lookalike?
Image Credit: The Next Web
Samsung and Apple are no strangers in the courtroom. The two companies have exchanged patent infringement suits over the past several years, with the most notable victory for Apple coming by way of a $1 billion+ award granted to Apple in the U.S. in 2012. While subsequent rulings have called into question the validity of some of the patents by which Apple secured victory in the case, Samsung continues to face scrutiny in the court of public opinion, where many still proclaim Samsung to be an Apple copycat.
Samsung caused quite a stir this morning at an event at Mobile World Congress when it announced the latest application to come out of the company’s software development team. The company unveiled Samsung Wallet, an application which heavily mirrors the functionality found in Apple’s Passbook. Samsung Wallet will provide Galaxy users the ability to store event tickets, boarding passes, rewards program information, and coupons in one central application, where users can then use the information in the appropriate venue via a scannable QR code displayed onscreen. Wallet will also notify users when their rewards and coupons can be redeemed (presumably using GPS technology), also nearly identical to the way Passbook operates today.
Nobody can question that these types of technology are the future. Google has been working in a similar vein with Google Wallet, for example, which focuses more on NFC payment and rewards redemption than Samsung’s application of the same name. Apple’s Passbook, introduced with iOS 6, operates in nearly exactly the same way as Samsung’s Wallet and there are many striking similarities between Apple and Samsung’s products that have some crying foul. But is the similar nature of these programs a blatant ripoff of Apple’s technology by Samsung, or is it an inevitable lookalike due to the limitation of these types of applications?
With Chromebook Pixel, Google loses sight of the Chrome OS market
Today, Google announced the Chromebook Pixel, and on paper at least, the Pixel is a beautiful laptop. It features a 12.85″ touch screen display with a brilliant 2,560 x 1,700 resolution. That’s over 4 million pixels and a whopping 239 PPI, much akin to that of Apple’s Retina MacBook Pro line. There’s 4GB of RAM,…
Through the looking glass: Google Glass comes to life with new video, website
By all accounts, I’m a Google Glass skeptic. While I find wearable technologies such as smartwatches, fitness bands, and other minimally connected devices extremely useful, the thought of being continually connected to a device over a body part through which we process an incomprehensible amount of information already seems to be overkill. I can’t shake…
HTC launching the One today, will be DOA unless they can market it
Today, HTC will unveil the HTC One, their latest superphone geared toward the high-end of the smartphone market. It’ll be pretty, powerful (we’ll bring you specs and a roundup of first impressions once the device launches), and many an Android enthusiast will likely be blown away by the device in total. But unless HTC decides…