The One M9 isn’t the only exciting new product HTC has to show off in Barcelona today. The Taiwanese company also announced Vive, a new standalone virtual reality headset developed in partnership with Valve that wants to change the way you game — and more.
Samsung’s three-sided display may make the Galaxy S6 Edge a little different, but it won’t be the most unique smartphone at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.
Monohm, a company based in Berkeley, California, that makes “heirloom electronics,” will announce a perfectly round smartphone called the Runcible that’s designed to look like a pocket watch.
Fancy a .app web address? You’re going to be buying it from Google. The search giant has splashed out just over $25 million on the entire .app web domain, which is around $19 million more than any other company has paid for a top-level domain so far.
iOS developers are constantly spitting on Android. But that’s not necessarily the way it should be. The developers behind iA Writer, one of the most beautiful distraction-free writing apps for iOS and Mac, have just ported their app to Android. And they seem really positive about Android so far.
When Apple’s Greg Joswiak first introduced the EarPods on stage at the iPhone 5 event in 2012, he said they “look unlike any headphone you’ve ever seen before.” Samsung won’t be able to say the same for its new earphones, however, because they are essentially EarPods clones.
It has taken a lot longer than we anticipated, but the South Korean company has finally gotten around to launching an EarPods ripoff of its own, and it’s expected to come bundled with the upcoming Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.
BlackBerry’s smartphone business is imploding in a big way in the U.K., where the company is currently losing around 56,000 users every month to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, new research shows.
Just two years ago, the Canadian company had around 8 million non-business users in the U.K., but that figure is expected to fall below 1 million by the end of this year.
Pebble’s brand new smartwatch is here, and it’s a huge improvement over its immensely popular predecessors. Pebble Time boasts a color display and a slimmer design, the same great battery life we’ve come to expect from Pebble watches, and a brand new operating system.
For the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, Samsung is ditching all of its tacky plastic in favor of an all-new design made entirely from premium materials — and already its efforts are paying off.
According to carrier partners that have been given a sneak peek at the next-generation devices ahead of their official debuts on March 1, the Galaxy S6 beats the iPhone 6 in terms of design.
Google is stepping up its game in the mobile payments space this year by striking a deal with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to pre-install Google Wallet on all Android phones.
The move comes after Apple Pay has started to take over the mobile payments space, despite launching less than six months ago. With the new pre-installed Google Wallet deal, Google will hopefully add more consumers to the feature that’s been around since 2011 but hasn’t grown as quickly as the company hoped.
YouTube Kids, the brand new app designed to make YouTube a safer and more enjoyable place for our little ones, is now available on Android and iOS.
In addition to a selection of curated videos ideal for young viewers, the apps make it easier for kids to find and navigate their way around suitable content, and they block out anything that’s not fit for small eyes.
As an iPhone owner, I’ve been curious about Android Wear, Google’s smartwatch platform, from the get-go. The problem is Android Wear requires an Android smartphone to work, leaving everyone out to dry.
That might be changing though. An independent developer has just released a tantalizing video, showing iOS sending notifications to an Android Wear smart watch.
Samsung has just released another teaser video of its upcoming flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S6. But will this be the iPhone-killer Samsung needs?
Pebble has promised us big things for 2015, and our wait for those could be over sooner than anticipated. The company today erected a countdown on its website that ends on Tuesday, February 24, at 7 a.m. PT.
While Samsung’s next-generation Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge may be dominating the headlines right now, they won’t be the only exciting devices the South Korean company releases this year.
New Galaxy Tab S slates are also on the horizon, and according to inside sources familiar with Samsung’s plans, they’re going to be made of metal and even thinner than Apple’s super-slim iPad Air 2.
iOS users have had plenty of reasons to crow about Apple handsets recently, but here’s one for the Android crowd: Android devices running the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop mobile OS have a lower application crash rate than devices running Apple’s much-vaunted iOS 8.
The data was pulled by mobile application performance management company Crittercism, which claims that Lollipop’s crash rate for apps is a miniscule 2 percent, compared to iOS 8 which crashes 2.2 percent of the time. The same study also shows that iOS 8 crashes more than its predecessor, iOS 7.
Unlike Apple, which is more comfortable (and lucrative) than ever with its business strategy, here in 2015 Samsung is having a bit of an identity crisis. Is it a freedom-fighting Internet of Things company making smart refrigerators and connected TVs? Is it a Xiaomi competitor, turning out cheaper smartphones than ever for the developing Indian market?
Like a deer in headlights, the company seems to be skittishly veering from one idea to the next, without any real understanding of what it needs to do to once again be competitive.
Of course, there is one idea that has worked for Samsung in the past, and with its mobile division falling on hard times, that strategy seems to be one the South Korean tech giant is more than happy to return to: copying Apple.
Samsung isn’t the only smartphone maker experiencing a decline in sales thanks to Apple’s latest iPhones. New data shows that the popularity of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus caused Android sales to decline for the first time ever during the fourth quarter of 2014.
Things aren’t looking too rosy for Samsung at the moment. Having seen profits slip due to its falling mobile sales, the flailing South Korean tech giant is reportedly considering throwing in the towel altogether in Japan, where it’s struggling more than elsewhere.
Samsung currently represents a miniscule 4 percent of the Japanese smartphone market, which puts it in sixth place. According to sources with Samsung, staying in Japan is actually losing rather than gaining the company money.
While Samsung hasn’t traditionally been a top-seller in Japan, here in 2015 it’s doing worse than ever: with the company’s favorite metric, marketshare, shrinking from 17 percent two years ago to low single digits today.
Samsung’s pursuit of great design could lead to another iPhone clone if these images, purported to be the handset’s new aluminum frame, turn out to be genuine.
The South Korean company appears to have dropped the sharp, straight edges seen on the Galaxy Alpha and the Galaxy Note 4 for a smoother, more rounded design just like that of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and it looks like the removable back panel is gone, too.
Coming off a monster financial quarter, things are pretty good in Cupertino right now. But if Tim Cook didn’t have enough to smile about over his morning coffee, here’s one more: Apple has overtaken U.S. sales of Android devices for the first time since 2012.
According to figures pulled by market research team Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the holiday quarter was a massive one for Apple as far as market share goes — with iOS devices picking up 47.7 percent of sales, compared to Android’s 47.6 percent.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen vast improvements to lithium-ion batteries, which power the portable gadgets we rely on today. But that’s all about to change, thanks to a company called SolidEnergy.
Born out of MIT in 2012, the startup has built a battery that stores more energy than that inside Apple’s iPhone 6, but measures half the size.
HTC does some pretty terrific things — its One M8 is a prime example of that. But it does some downright ridiculous things, too, like producing its own rap videos.
Yes, you read that right: The Taiwanese company has produced a rap video that explains the many advantages the One M8 has over its rivals, and trashes competing products like the iPhone 6 and Samsung’s Galaxy S5.
Back in December, we noted that Microsoft had acquired the popular iOS and Android email app Acompli, which offered a more task-oriented approach to email, with the ability to schedule meetings, edit your calendar, and in your most important emails to the top of the page.
Just under two months on, and Microsoft is launching a cross-platform version of Outlook for the first time ever — incorporating pretty much all the tools previously found in Acompli.
And don’t worry: if you’re not a user of Microsoft’s email services, Outlook also supports Yahoo, iCloud and Gmail accounts.
Apple and Samsung were dead even when it came to worldwide smartphone sales in the last three months of 2014, with each company selling 74.5 million handsets around the globe to capture a shade under 20 percent of the total marketshare.
For those keeping track at home, the last time the two were tied so evenly was Q4 2011 — shortly following the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and just after Tim Cook took over as CEO.
Thanks to the plethora of low-cost devices in addition to some higher end smartphones, Android has long been beating Apple’s iOS when it comes to market share. But a new report from app analytics firm App Annie shows just how imprecise this metric is — by comparing total number of app store downloads to actual money generated.
And it sure makes for interesting reading.
As expected, Google’s Play Store experienced 60 percent more app downloads than Apple in 2014. While that sounds like a definite win for the Android loving crowd, Apple’s iOS App Store still managed to generate more money than Google did — to the tune of 70 percent more yearly app revenue.
