Cult of Android - page 13

James Bond depressed the brake in his Aston Martin, slowing the silver beast down to stalking speed. As the car dawdled outside the six-star Maldives hotel, he rolled up the sleeve of his Giorgio Armani shirt, checked the time on his gleaming $20,000 Omega watch, and then reached into his pocket and withdrew the middling Samsung Galaxy S6.

Something’s wrong with the above scene — and Bond producers seemingly thought so too, because apparently they turned down a massive $50 million marketing and promotional package from Samsung, which would have seen Bond carry a Samsung handset in the new movie Spectre.

Why? Because Bond only uses the best.

Ready to boost you and your giant mecha fighters into battle on your Android or iOS phone?

Looks like you’ll only need to wait until 2016, says developer Respawn Entertainment, for several new mobile titles set in the popular first person shooter franchise, Titanfall.

T-Mobile is hosting its 10th Uncarrier event on November 10 and @evleaks was on the case to find out what the carrier has in store for us. The very reliable Evan Blass tweeted that the Uncarrier 10 move will offer unlimited video streaming from services like Netflix, Hulu and HBO that doesn’t count against your data plan.

Bendgate is back, and this time, it’s an Android device that’s at the center of it.

Google’s brand new Nexus 6P, which is being dubbed the company’s best smartphone by critics and consumers, is nowhere near as durable as it is pretty. Check out the video below in which the device scratches, cracks, burns, and bends surprisingly easily.

Apple’s latest app for Android is a bitter, ahem, Pill+ for Fandroids to swallow — with numerous one-star reviews already hitting the Google Play Store.

Arriving yesterday, the app lets users control and manage their newly-launched Beats Pill+ speaker, including allowing multiple users to take control of the music playing from a speaker, or configuring two speakers to achieve a higher volume level.

But, of course, it’s made by Apple. So by the ancient laws of Android it must be punished!

As an Android user, you might feel a little saddened by the fact that you can’t use Apple’s 3D Touch system on your Android device of choice. It’s a pretty neat technology that lets an iPhone sense different pressures on the screen to produce some slick little tricks, like taking a selfie with a strong press on the Camera app icon.

Marco Chiappetta figured out a way to do something similar on his Sony Xperia Z3 using a pretty unexpected little trick.

YouTube Red, the new subscription service that lets you enjoy the latest content from your favorite YouTube channels without ads, is now live in the United States.

Priced at $9.99 — and bundled with Google Play Music — Red also lets you play YouTube content in the background on your mobile devices, and download videos for offline viewing.

Microsoft is merging two of its most popular mobile apps into one: Outlook email and Sunrise calendar. Outlook has always been a favorite among email users while Sunrise rose to fame for being both free and feature-packed. Combined as one, Microsoft is hoping the move enables users to more seamlessly glide between emailing and calendar tasks.

The result isn’t really a huge departure from what Microsoft currently offers in Outlook, since Outlook already has your calendars built in. Instead, it’s more about refining navigation within the app while additionally bringing in some features from Sunrise.

The biggest change is that the sun is setting on Sunrise. After Microsoft bought the calendar app just this year, the company is already pulling the plug on it.

Nintendo is set to unveil its first smartphone game tomorrow, October 29 — seven months after it announced that it would finally give in to the demands of Android and iOS gamers.

Nintendo will be hoping that its mobile game business is a success following weakening demand for its 3DS and Wii U consoles.

Maybe you know this sickening feeling: Your smartphone slips from your hand and starts its descent toward the ground. If you’re standing in an asphalt parking lot or walking down a city sidewalk — and you don’t have your phone protected in a life-preserving case — you know what happens next.

Time seems to stand still as the phone falls toward earth. Then … Impact. Shattering glass. And a horrifying glimpse at the damage done.

Android Pay, the newest kid on the block in mobile phone payments, has found a way to get people using their smartphones to pay for goods and services: loyalty reward systems.

Like similar retail, grocery and airline programs, Android Pay will soon include points for specific purchases to encourage us all to use our smartphones more and more to pay for the stuff we already buy.

Coke is the first program up, according to Google exec Sridhar Ramaswamy, with points to earn each time you use Android Pay to buy a Coke through any one of some 20,000 NFC-enabled Coca-Cola vending machines. You’ll get points that will let you get free Coke, Coca-Cola gets to know where and when people are buying its products and Google gets people to use Android Pay. It’s win-win-win.

Apple Watch is by far the most successful smartwatch to date in terms of sales, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Apple has been voted the “coolest wearables brand” by smartphone users.

The Cupertino company not only beat technology rivals like Samsung and LG to the top of the list, but also high-end watchmakers and fashion brands like TAG Heuer, Rolex, and Ralph Lauren.

Xiaomi isn’t exactly known for having its own ideas, so why would you expect it to act any differently when Apple introduced its innovative new 3D Touch feature for the iPhone 6s?

True to form, a new rumor coming out of China claims that Xiaomi has patented its own version of the technology. Because, of course it has.

HTC has been getting a lot of stick for its brand new One A9, which looks just like another iPhone clone. But the Taiwanese company insists that the design was its own idea, and that Apple actually copied HTC’s first unibody phone that was released in 2013.

Jony Ive sure hates rival companies ripping off the iPhone for their latest flagship handset design. Which is why we’d respectfully suggest that Jony doesn’t click the link below, unless he wants to ruin his Wednesday before it even starts.

From the curved edges and color options to the prominent antenna lines, all that’s missing is the Apple stamp of quality. And Jony’s permission, of course.

Forget self-driving cars that will drive you to the store while you sit back watching Netflix, because where we’re going, we don’t need roads.

Google has leaked highly “confidential” plans for a new time-traveling car the company calls Project Flux.

Misfit is back with a major update to its award-winning Shine fitness and sleep tracker. The new Shine 2 is faster and more accurate than its predecessor, with an added 3-axis magnetometer and updated hardware that promises improved responsiveness and snappier syncing.

Samsung has received a multi-million dollar investment from the South Korean government to develop factory robots to help win manufacturing work currently being lost to cheap human labor in China.

Fingerprint scanners on Android devices have been hit-or-miss (mostly miss) in recent years, but they’re getting a whole lot better. There’s no better example of that than the new Nexus 5X, which is even faster at recognizing your print than the new Touch ID sensor in iPhone 6s.

Samsung is expected to follow Apple’s footsteps and build a pressure-sensitive display into next year’s Galaxy S7, according to recent reports — and now a new patent backs up those claims with proof that the South Korean company has been hard at work on a similar technology for over a year.

You’ll never be without an Internet connection in U.K. towns and cities in the future, thanks to Wi-Fi-emitting sidewalks.

Chesham in Buckinghamshire has become the first town to deliver Wi-Fi at speeds of up to 166 Mbps, seven times the average broadband speed in the U.K., through “Smart Pavements” courtesy of broadband provider Virgin Media.

Siri can be silently put to work against you, thanks to a new hack discovered by French security researchers that allows attackers to transmit orders to the digital assistant via a radio.

The hack also works on Google Now and utilizes the headphone cord as an antenna to convert electromagnetic waves into signals that register in iOS and Android as audio coming from the microphone. José Lopes Esteves and Chaouki Kasmie — the two French researchers that discovered the hack — wrote in their paper that hackers could use the attack to get Siri and Google Now to send the phone’s browser to a malware site, or send spam and phishing messages to friends.

“The sky is the limit here,” says Vincent Strubel, the director of their research group at ANSSI. “Everything you can do through the voice interface you can do remotely and discreetly through electromagnetic waves.”

Apple’s new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus may be packing its best iSight camera yet, but it’s not good enough to topple the latest Android devices.

In DxOMark’s expert camera tests, Apple’s latest smartphones achieve a score of 82, which is five points less than the current mobile leader, Sony’s Xperia Z5.

When it comes to specifications, Apple’s latest iPhones look like they’re lagging far behind their Android-powered rivals. But thanks to super-efficient software, they’re not as slow and as outdated as they might look on paper.

This is demonstrated in the real-world speed test below, in which the iPhone 6s Plus somehow batters a Galaxy Note 5.

Google is incredibly accurate at understanding voice searches, which makes it super useful on mobile when you might want to find information without using your hands. But did you know that the company records every single voice search you make?

What’s more, you can listen back to each and every one.