Rovio has taken some time away from Angry Birds and Bad Piggies to focus on its next project, the official game for the upcoming DreamWorks movie The Croods. Believe it or not, it’s not a physics-based puzzle game, and Rovio has released the game’s first trailer to prove it.
In-Flight Wi-Fi service, Gogo, released some numbers today on their blog, showing that Apple devices are still the most popular way passengers are accessing the internet via the service while flying above 10,000 feet.
Tablets and smartphones, according to Gogo, make up 67 percent of the devices used to connect to the Wi-Fi service on airplanes. Tablets themselves are the most popular, with 35 percent, closely followed by 33 percent of folks using laptops and 32 percent using smartphones for their mile-high internet surfing sessions.
It gets even more interesting when you break down which tablets and smartphones are being used.
Even though Apple and Google hate each other now days, that hasn’t stopped Google from making some really great apps for the iPhone. Google’s latest creation just hit the App Store today and it’s focused on local discovery.
Field Trip has previously been an Android-only app, but Google is bringing it to the iPhone today for free. The app is kind of like Google Now. It runs in the background and then automatically alerts you of interesting information in your area based on location data.
In the competition between iOS and Android, Google’s Android operating system has been growing in the U.S. much faster than iOS until now. For the first time, Android actually lost some of its U.S. marketshare in 2013 while iOS gained a few points.
comScore just released its report on the U.S. smartphone market and had some very encouraging news for Apple. While most other manufacturers are slumping, Apple is increasing its lead on Samsung, HTC, Motorola and LG in the U.S.
The latest App Report from research firm Appthority has found that free apps downloaded onto iOS devices are more likely to collect your personal data than free apps downloaded on Android, with 60% of the top ten App Store downloads sharing data with advertising and analytics networks.
The report suggests that due to the volume of titles in the App Store, iOS developers are more likely to collect your data and pass it on as an alternative revenue stream.
Teardown specialists iFixit have published a new tablet repairability guide that quickly tells you how difficult it’s going to be to mend your broken Android, iOS, or Windows 8 slate. The guide features 18 popular tablets, which have been given a repairability score between one and ten. The higher the score, the easier they are to repair.
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s iPads are some of the hardest tablets to fix, second only to the Microsoft Surface Pro — the only tablet with a score of one. Amazon’s Kindle Fire’s, on the other hand, are relatively easy to repair, as are Dell’s devices.
British carrier O2 has today launched a new VoIP and messaging service called TU Go, which is available to its pay monthly customers with Android and iOS devices. The service allows users to make calls and send texts over the Internet, so even when they have no cell reception, they can connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot and get in touch with friends and family.
Yeah yeah, Vine is all the rage right now. But remember Socialcam, the share-heavy iOS video app from effects-wizard Autodesk? If you don’t, here’s a reminder that the app is a sharp tool for shooting and sharing quick vids on Facebook — and it’s just been spiced up with HDR, new filters and the ability to shoot in 720p.
We got it wrong last week, when we thought a cryptic Disney teaser was a clue to something we’ve been salivating over for a few months: the arrival of Android and iOS at Disney’s Infinity platform.
Instead, Disney has released a beautiful Toy Story 3D puzzler game for iOS and Android; and even though it’s not exactly what we’ve been waiting for, it still looks really freaking cool.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was pretty disappointing from a gadget-lovers point of view. Samsung was there, but didn’t announce anything new. Microsoft didn’t even have a stand, and even the once-great App Planet section is little but a business-service wasteland (albeit with the best tea, coffee and beer in the show).
Still, even a pile of crap has variations in its texture, and so we bring you the “Best” of Mobile World Congress 2013.
Speaking in front of an audience at TED today, Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a bizarre pitch for buying his company’s wearable Google Glass headset, essentially by arguing that product utilizing one of his company’s biggest projects — Android — were effeminate and made for wussies.
At today’s Apple Shareholders Meeting, CEO Tim Cook admitted that Apple was “looking at new product categories” but that the company had no interest in just “pressing a button or two” to have Apple make the most products.
While you may chalk up any pro-Apple sentiment here as only true to form, it’s perhaps even more telling when there’s another, more impartial group, claiming an Apple win.
Good Technology is one such independent group. The company provides mobile device, app, and data security to over 4000 customers, including banks, healthcare organizations, governments, and retailers. They also do a quarterly Device Activation Report, which looks at the type of mobile devices and uses in the Enterprise. The Q4 report, released today, details which and how many smartphone and tablet devices were activated by Good Technology’s enterprise customers.
Guess what they found? Hint: it’s in the headline.
What was once an iPhone-only social network has quickly become one of the world’s largest social behemoths. Instagram’s co-founder, Kevin Systrom, announced today that the photo-sharing network just surpassed the 100 million active users mark.
Compared to its parent company Facebook, 100 million active users doesn’t sound like much. But when you consider that Twitter just hit the 200 million active users mark last year, Instagram’s got something to be proud of because it’s a much younger service.
BlackBerry has been the preferred handheld for many of the U.S. Department of Defence’s employees because it’s got the security clearance to run on the Pentagon’s network. That might all change in 2014 though when Android and iOS join the party.
The U.S. Defense Department said today that it plans to open up its networks by February 2014 and allow 100,000 mobile phones and tablets from Apple and Google to use the network.
Yesterday we showed you the ZTE Open, the first entry-level smartphone running Mozilla’s new Firefox OS. Other companies, like Sony, are planning to release Firefox OS phones as well. Mozilla has been trying to get the word out at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
During a recent talk at MWC, Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs touted Firefox OS as a new platform to disrupt Android and Apple’s hold on the industry.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – Here’s something I wish would come to a future iPhone, or — even better — an iPad: e-ink. Imagine being able to switch to an e-ink version of the tablet and read in bright sunlight. Or turn off the various radios and enjoy a battery life measured in months, not hours.
That’s what the e-ink phone can do.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — As I was walking around the show floor at MWC today, I noticed a number of smartphones that looked very familiar — yet they were being paraded by Chinese companies I’d never heard of. I saw what looked like a large iPhone 5, an entire range of Samsung Galaxy devices, and a number of high-end HTC handsets.
Except they weren’t really Apple, Samsung, or HTC devices at all; they were actually cheap clones that were trying their best to look like the real thing. They even had fake accessories that were identical to the originals.
If you’ve ever heard a snatch of a song in a bar and found yourself tormented for not knowing who it was by, you should probably know about Shazam, an awesome iOS app that analyzes music around you and tells you who the heck it’s by and how to buy it.
Are you one of the 300 million users who already knows about Shazam? Great! Shazam’s just announced some mean new updates to its iPad app, including much faster tagging with automatic resubmissions, better sharing features and Shazam Friends interactions, a revamped home screen, and more.
In an attempt to go head-to-head with the likes of iMessage and BBM in emerging markets, social network Facebook has just announced that it will be allowing users of its Messenger app to send messages at free or heavily discounted data rates.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS -Mobile World Congress 2013 is now underway here in Barcelona, and there’s one device we couldn’t wait to get our hands on: the Galaxy Note 8.0 — Samsung’s answer to the iPad mini. In addition to its 8-inch display, the device boasts a 1.6GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and of course, the Note’s trademark S Pen.
But can it give the iPad mini a run for its money?
Google’s crazy new Project Glasses look awesome. So far only a few people have actually got to try them out, but the reviews have been very positive, even if it does look weird to have a computer on your face.
While Google hasn’t announced an official release date for Google Glass, they’re already let a number of developers preorder a unit for $1500. A new report says that the Glasses will actually be released in 2013 though, and they’re going to work with the iPhone.
There are many Craigslist apps out there, but let’s be honest, most of them suck. A new app for Craigslist on Android and iPhone has arrived, and it’s beautiful. It comes from Mokriya, the development company behind high profile apps like Path.
Mokriya’s app is officially licensed by Craigslist, and it’s available now for free in Google Play and the App Store.
Sony and Microsoft, are all coming out with new gaming consoles this year, but when it comes to handheld gaming, Apple and Google have got them beat.
A new report claims that in the fourth quarter of 2012, gamers spend more money on iOS and Android games combined than the amount spent on dedicated handheld devices.
There’s this really cool, funny, slick video made by a bunch of Israelis called Sight, in which a guy walks around in a world where everything he sees is overlayed by augmented reality. Everything. All the time. Sounds far-fetched? Not so much anymore.
Today, Metaio announced that their new augmented-reality chip, called the Metaio AREngine, will make its debut in ST-Ericsson phones — in a handset(s) that may be available to the public as soon as the end of this year, or early 2014 if things move more slowly.