While the iPhone’s Retina display may no longer be king when it comes to pixel count, it’s one of the fastest smartphone displays on the market, easily outpacing all of its rivals.
According to a TouchMark test carried out by Agawi, the Retina display responds more than twice as fast as any of its rivals — including the Galaxy S4 and other high-end Android devices — even on the three-year-old iPhone 4.
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear has been on sale for a number of weeks now, but today the South Korean company lifted its embargo on reviews. If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not you should spend hundreds of dollars on one, then, now’s the time to find out.
To make things a little easier for you, we’ve put together a roundup of the biggest and best reviews so you don’t have to trawl through them yourself.
Some lucky folks at Verizon were recently able to upgrade to a new phone without losing their unlimited data plan. Color us totally jealous.
This was the result of a glitch, said Verizon, and not a change in policy like some may have mistakenly hoped for.
Verizon told AllThingsD on Monday that it would, however, honor the unlimited plans of customers that were able to upgrade without the dreaded limited data plan of doom.
Over the last couple of years Samsung has earned itself a reputation for using Apple products as “inspiration” and then copying them in the most blatant ways possible.
The fury of Apple fans was ignited again last week as Samsung was caught shamelessly copying the Apple’s new golden iPhone creation – the golden iPhone 5s – when the South Korean smartphone maker announced it would be selling a gold variant of the Galaxy S4. Apple fans were quick to dismiss the smartphone as another copycat move,but Samsung took to its corporate blog to explain that it’s totally not copying the gold iPhone because they’ve made tons of gold phones in the past (kind of).
Samsung has today announced that its cross-platform ChatON messaging service now boasts over 100 million users across Android, BlackBerry, iOS, and Windows Phone. It’s taken just two years for the service to become more popular than BBM, once one of the biggest names in instant messaging, and it continues to grow at an impressive rate.
Google is already serving you Gmail ads on your desktop, and soon you’ll see them on your mobile, too. Although they aren’t active just yet, there is evidence for them in the latest Gmail for Android release, which was made available to download via Google Play last week.
Facebook announced this afternoon that Android and web users will now be able to edit status updates after they have been posted, meaning you can finally cleanse your status update masterpieces of careless typos without losing your cherished likes, comments and shares.
The new feature should be live on the web and Android versions of Facebook later this afternoon, but iOS users will have to wait a short while before it hits iPhones.
Seminal 1990s tabletop role-playing game, Shadowrun, has recently come to the digital domain, originally with a version of Shadowrun Returns for the Mac, PC, and Linux platforms. Cult of Mac gave the game a stellar review, calling it a “fully realized tabletop to digital RPG conversion.” Say that five times fast.
Now the game is finally on tablets, both of the Android and iOS variety, and the buzz is that it’s a note-for-note port of the desktop game, minus the campaign editor. That’s a lot of game to smoosh into a tablet.
BlackBerry failed miserably in its attempt to bring BBM to Android and iOS last week, but the Canadian company hasn’t given up on making its popular messaging service available to all. In fact, it isn’t just targeting other mobile platforms, but it’s also planning to bring BBM to your desktop, too.
When it comes to mobile gaming, the upcoming Google Nexus 5 could be one of the most impressive Android-powered smartphones to date. Leaked benchmarks that have surfaced online this week reveal the new device outperforms the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One in graphics performance, matching the new 64-bit iPhone 5s.
A somewhat concerning bug affecting a large number of Google Hangouts and Google Talk users is causing messages to be delivered to the wrong recipients. The problem, which appears to have started early this morning, is already being investigated by Google — but you may want to avoid using these services for the time being if you can.
Samsung has traditionally offered its smartphones in a whole variety of colors, but one we rarely see is gold — until Apple announces a gold smartphone. Just two weeks after the Cupertino company unveiled the gold iPhone 5s, Samsung has begun showcasing its gold Galaxy S4 in the United Arab Emirates.
Does this company have any shame?
PopCap Games free-to-play Plants vs. Zombies 2 is a contentious game to many. If you’re our own good friend Buster Heine, you probably think it’s a masterpiece of a sequel, proof-positive that free-to-play can be done well in the right hands. If you’re me or my girlfriend, though, you likely think it is inferior to the first game in pretty much every way, and a perfect example of how free-to-play mechanisms can ruin an otherwise great game.
Whatever your feelings on the matter, you have to admit that getting Plants vs. Zombies 2 exclusively to iOS is quite the coup. According to EA, it’s a coup that Cupertino (get it?) was willing to pay buckets of money to get. But is that the truth?
Amazon has today unveiled its new third-generation tablet called the Kindle Fire HDX. Like its predecessors, the device is available in 7-inch and 8.9-inch variants, and both feature speedy quad-core Snapdragon 800 processors, high-resolution displays, 2GB of RAM, and stereo speakers.
The larger model also offers an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, which is a first for the Kindle Fire lineup.
In addition to the new models, Amazon has refreshed the Kindle Fire HD to add improved displays, faster processors, and Amazon’s latest software. The retail giant has also reduced the price of the 7-inch device to $139, while the 8.9-inch model is now just $269.
Wunderlist, the hugely popular cross-platform productivity app that now boasts over 5.3 million users worldwide, got a new feature called Comments this week, which brings the conversation to your to-do list. If you use Wunderlist in a professional environment, you can now discuss tasks and projects with your team within individual to-dos.
What’s more, you can now try Comments — as well as Files and Assigning — for free for a limited time, without signing up to Wunderlist Pro.
Good thing you listened to us this morning when we posted about a new Google Play app that seemed to let you send Apple iMessages via an Android app.
When something seems to good to be true, it usually is.
In this instance, Google agrees, and has pulled the app from the Google Play Store for violating its terms of use. A spokesperson emailed ComputerWorld, saying, “We remove apps from Google Play that violate our policies.”
Fairly clear, right? As we pointed out this morning, the iMessage Chat app for Android devices turned out to be sending data, including users’ Apple IDs, through another server in China, which is kind of an easy way to steal people’s sensitive information. Apple IDs and passwords can be used to purchase apps, books, and music from the App Store, as well as connect to iCloud data, which can have addresses and more personal info.
Apple’s iMessage service is pretty terrific, but it has one big limitation, and that is that it’s only available on Macs and iOS devices. At least officially. But there is an unofficial app that brings iMessage to your Android-powered smartphone. It works just as advertised, but we strongly advise you not to use it.
BBM’s cross-platform launch failed miserably this weekend. The app made its way to the iPhone in a small few countries, but the rollout was halted before it could reach the United States — or Google Play.
BlackBerry’s excuse for the catastrophic failure was that a leaked BBM APK for Android was causing some server troubles, and now the Canadian company has told fans that it will “take some time” to fix the problem, and that we should not expect to see the app this week.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and while Apple has tested this assumption in court against Samsung and other mobile device manufacturers, Android users and developers might have a different opinion.
Because, as you can see from the screenshot above, a whole bunch of apps have appeared in the Google Play store with the express purpose of making your Android handset look just like…well, an iPhone running iOS 7.
Of course, the argument could be made that only Android is open enough to actually allow its users to change the look and feel of their devices to a competing system’s visual system, but the result is still clear: Android developers, at least, think that you should be able to have a mobile phone that looks like the latest iOS devices on the screen as well as in the design of the handset itself.
There are lock screen apps for Android that mimic the parallax of the new iOS 7, apps that call themselves iOS 7 wallpaper, when they really aren’t, and apps that are just plain honest, titled iOS 7 Fake iPhone.
Hit some of those links above to try these out on your own, because we all know it’d be cool to have an Android phone that looks like an iPhone running iOS 7.
Right?
Discuss.
The iPhone 5s might be the closest any smartphone’s ever come to perfection, but none of its shiny glass, metal and chamfered surfaces really matter if they can stand up to some daily wear and tear. To see which new smartphone is the most durable, the gadget insurance company SquareTrade pitted the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c against the Moto X and Samsung Galaxy S4, in a series of damage tests, including getting dunked in water.
In the end, Moto X came out on top, with the iPhone 5s coming in a close second. The Galaxy S4 on the other hand didn’t fair too well, and was dominated by everyone, including the cheaper the iPhone 5c.
Watch the full results below:
BlackBerry is a great company with great products and great ideas. But BlackBerry is failing hard. And the reason is that BlackBerry’s model is obsolete.
Don’t look now, but it’s 2013. If your handset isn’t running iOS or Android, you will not succeed in the consumer smartphone market.
And succeeding is exactly what isn’t happening at BlackBerry. The company recently announced a quarterly loss of about $1 billion. They announced that 40% of BlackBerry employees will be laid off. They’ve put the company up for sale. They’re selling their jet.
It’s over, basically. But it doesn’t have to be.
What BlackBerry really needs is to become an Android-handset maker.
BBM for Android and iOS is now officially available to download from the App Store and Google Play. It’s the first time in its history that the popular messaging service has been brought to a third-party platform — but with services like WhatsApp and Viber already dominating cross-platform chat, is it too late?
At the Tokyo Games Show today, Sony unveiled its new PlayStation App for Android and iOS, which lets gamers access the PlayStation Network from their smartphone and tablet to interact with friends, see what others are playing, and remotely download games to your console.
The app will also turn your Android or iOS device into a second screen for selected PlayStation 4 titles.
BlackBerry has finally provided us with launch dates for its new BBM apps for Android and iOS. Just as we expected, the popular messaging service will reach Google Play first on Saturday, September 21 — before popping up in the App Store just a day later on Sunday, September 22.
Hate the fact that your wireless carrier keeps your smartphone locked? President Obama does too. The White House has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking that wireless carriers be required to unlock all mobile devices.