When it comes to smartphone displays, how many pixels is too many? Most of us believe the current crop of 1080p displays shipping with today’s flagships provide more than enough for our handheld devices, but Chinese manufacturer Vivo disagrees.
The company has begun teasing the Xplay3S, its new smartphone that will become the world’s first with a 2K display.
As promised, Microsoft has released its official Remote Desktop app for Android and iOS to coincide with the launch of Windows 8.1. The app is free to download and use, and just like the many third-party remote desktop clients, it allows you to access your Windows PC remotely from your smartphone or tablet.
While you may see the same adverts inside the Facebook app no matter which smartphone you use, those ads are 1,790% more profitable on the iPhone than they are on Android-powered smartphones. That’s according to an analysis of over 200 billion Facebook ads from Nanigans, one of the biggest customers of Facebook ads.
Could you be persuaded to give up your iPhone and switch to Android if you were given a really simple tool to transfer all of your important data? Motorola is certainly hoping so with its new web-based migration tool that takes all of your contacts and calendar events from iCloud and puts them on a Moto X.
Twitter hopes to compete with instant messaging services like WhatsApp and Line with a new app that’s dedicated to direct messaging, AllThingsD reports. The company hopes the move will bring “the long-buried feature to the forefront” and place a new emphasis on its private messaging capabilities.
EE has today announced the U.K.’s first 4G pay-as-you-go plans, as well as its “most affordable” pay monthly 4G packages as it looks to step up its fight against competing 4G services from O2 and Vodafone. They go live on October 30, and they promise to provide Brits with cheaper and easier access to the 4G revolution.
When you’re browsing the web on your mobile, prepare to stumble across new popups that bash the smartphone you’re using.
LG, together with advertising agency M&C Saatchi, has designed intelligent new ads that find out what smartphone you’re using to take trolling to a new level. They’ll pick common faults with your iPhone, your Galaxy S4, or your HTC One — and then tell you why the LG G2 is better.
Google Glass may look pretty absurd in its current form, but its still a first-generation device that’s only available in a limited capacity to developers and a handful of lucky early adopters. But by the time the device is ready for public release in 2014, it will sport a new, lightweight and “cooler” design.
Just a week or so ago, we quoted a Square Enix producer saying that there were a lot of fans in the offices who wanted to see a Final Fantasy VII port happen. But don’t hold your breath, as millions of fans appear to have done, promting Square Enix to set the record straight: it’s years away from happening, if ever.
Twitter has today introduced the ability for users to receive direct messages from people they choose not to follow. Until now, users had to be following each other to communicate privately, but the new option lets you receive DMs from anyone who follows you.
Still waiting for BBM to come to Android and iOS? Aren’t we all.
It’s been almost four weeks since BlackBerry attempted and then stalled its cross-platform BBM rollout, and the Canadian company has remained pretty quiet about its plans ever since. But according to chief marketing officer Frank Boulben, we could see BBM in the App Store and Google Play before the end of the week.
For telly addicts in the U.K., the free TVCatchup app for Android and iOS makes it easy for them to watch live TV channels while they’re on the go. But thanks to an ongoing legal dispute with a number of public service broadcasters, the app’s developers have been forced to pull popular feeds, including ITV and Channel 4.
Everybody is outraged — OUTRAGED! — that Google will soon start using their names and faces in advertising.
The pundits are screaming bloody murder over the move, suggesting that Google is now as bad as Facebook. The more constructive critics are scrambling to give instructions for opting out.
But all this gnashing of teeth and ripping of hair over Google’s new social ad policy is misguided, in my opinion. I’ll tell you why Google’s new “shared endorsements” is probably a good thing, but also how it could turn out to suck.
But first, let me tell you what this is really all about and why “shared endorsements” is probably a good thing.
The Google TV has pretty much been dead-on-arrival ever since it first launched in 2010. Google’s not about to abandon their TV ambitions, but they’re finally giving up on Google TV. Next up? Android TV.
Given Samsung’s habit of shamelessly copying everything Apple does, I wasn’t at all surprised to see this morning’s report that the South Korean company had just spent $650 million on a fingerprint scanning firm called FingerPrint Cards. In fact, I simply rolled my eyes when I saw the news and thought, “there’s a surprise.”
But it appears that the whole thing was completely fabricated. The press release that went out announcing the move was false, and both Samsung and FingerPrint Cards have denied the acquisition.
Instagram announced new versions of its app on Android and iOS are now available. The Android 4.2 update adds the intelligent photo straightening tool that iOS users have been enjoying for a few months now.
The iOS 4.2.1 update doesn’t contain any major new features, although Instragam did add new settings that let you mute the playback of video with your ringer switch, or leave it always on. You can also choose to preload videos over Wi-Fi only or leave it always on as well. Unfortunately, there’s still no slo-mo support.
The free updates are available for free in the App Store and Google Play.
Fitbit has today announced its new fitness tracker, the Force, which combines all of the features found in the original Fitbit Flex with some of the more advanced features found in the Fitbit One tracker. It costs $129.95, slightly more than the $99 Flex, and it’s available today.
Square-Enix has a great habit of porting over their worst Final Fantasy games to iOS without ever giving iPhone or iPad owners the games they really want, like Final Fantasy VI or VII.
That seems to be coming to an end, though: Square-Enix is finally releasing Final Fantasy VI, their best 16-bit Final Fantasy game for the SNES, on iOS.
If you’ve ever traveled internationally and been unlucky or unknowing enough to keep on using your smartphone’s data as if you were still in the fatherland, you’ll know that watching a single YouTube video on a foreign network can result in a few hunded dollars being added to your bill.
International roaming charges are so insane that the European Commission is actually planning to abolish them altogether. But looks like T-Mobile beat them to the punch: the uncarrier is now promising free global data in over 100 different countries, no extra charge.
In a move that’s sure to upset some third-party app developers, Microsoft is planning to launch official Remote Desktop apps for Android and iOS later this month. Like the Remote Desktop solutions for Windows and OS X, the apps will allow you to connect to your PC and control it remotely from your smartphone and tablet.
Vodafone U.K. has today announced that its new 4G LTE network will be available in Liverpool, Glasgow, and Manchester by the end of this month. It’s been just seven weeks since the service took off, and Vodafone says that more than 100,000 people have already signed up to a new 4G plan.
Yahoo! has today updated its Yahoo! Mail apps for Android and iOS to introduce support for threaded messages (which it is calling “Conversations”), themes, and 1TB of storage for every user. That’s enough to store 500,000 to 1 million attachments, Yahoo! says, or 6,000 years’ worth of emails for the average user.
AT&T has updated its U-verse apps for Android and iOS to add live streaming for over 100 channels, more than 20 of which can be enjoyed “outside the home.” The service is available at no extra cost for AT&T subscribers as part of their existing U-family or U-verse TV package.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt has dismissed claims that Android is insecure by claiming “it’s more secure than the iPhone.” The platform, which has more than a billion users worldwide, goes through rigorous real-world testing, Schmidt said, before promising consumers would be happier with Android “more than you can possibly imagine.”
I love Google Glass, and wear mine almost every day. But Glass could never succeed as a consumer product as is. It’s funky and clunky, fragile and — worst of all — socially unacceptable.
Here are my suggestions the Google Glass team for how to fix all these problems and make Google Glass the killer consumer product of the decade.
