Gameloft has today launched Blitz Brigade, a new online multiplayer game, on Android and iOS. It’s a class-based first-person shooter that’s clearly heavily influenced by Valve’s Team Fortress titles, and it’s a whole lot of fun.
Facebook is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire mobile navigation app Waze for between $800 million and $1 billion. Talks between the two companies began around six months ago, and a term sheet has already been signed, according to business daily Calcalist.
Apple wants to see documents related to Android source code in its ongoing patent infringement suit against Samsung. The Cupertino company has asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal to force Google to hand over the information, which it is allegedly withholding improperly, Bloomberg reports.
Samsung loves bashing its competitors, and it often does so in advertisements for new Galaxy products. So it’s no surprise that the Korean company has programmed its S Voice assistant to bash the iPhone. Ask it if it’s ever used Apple’s popular smartphone and S Voice delivers a scolding response.
The RunKeeper apps for Android and iOS have today been updated to add a number of new features, the biggest of which is support for the Pebble smartwatch. Users can now see all kinds of data, such as their pace and the distance they’ve ran, with a quick glance at their wrist while they’re on the go.
Viber, the popular cross-platform messaging service for smartphones, is no longer just for smartphones. The company has today launched new desktop applications that allow you to chat with friends; send stickers, emoticons, and photos; and make calls from a Mac or PC.
Rovio has launched a new service called Rovio Accounts, which allows you to pick up your saved games on any mobile device. So if you complete ten Angry Birds levels on your Android smartphone, you’ll see the same progress when you login on your iPad.
Rovio Accounts isn’t just compatible with Angry Birds, but other titles from Rovio as well. The service will initially launch worldwide inside The Croods, as well as in the original Angry Birds game for iOS in Finland and Poland.
The Fitbit Flex has officially gone on sale for $100 online and in U.S. retail stores. We saw the “OG fitness-tracking dongle” at CES earlier this year, where it was clear that Fitbit was trying to steal the mojo from competitors like Nike’s Fuelband and the Jawbone Up. Now the Flex is out in the wild, and users can be the judge.
Bluetooth 4.0 is used to connect the silicon wristband to an Android device or iPhone. It does everything the typical fitness tracker accomplishes: counts calories and steps, monitors sleeping, and lets you share stats with friends to keep you motivated. The actual exercise is still on you, though.
Even though we love the HTC One, there are really only two smartphone manufacturers in the world right now that matter: Apple and Samsung. The two companies have been fighting for every square inch of the global smartphone market, and have managed to take all of the profits in the process.
A new report from Canaccord Genuity shows that while some manufacturers made improvements in the March quarter of 2013, Apple and Samsung still account for 100% of the industry’s profits, with Apple taking 57% and Samsung snatching up the remaining 43%.
There’s a lobbying and PR firm that exists solely to oppose Google. It’s made up of companies that compete directly with Google.
Their latest effort involves the filing of an antitrust complaint with European authorities over Android.
Here’s why the complaint fails the tests of both truth and intelligence.
Spotify has acquired Swedish music discovery startup Tunigo in an effort to compete with Twitter’s new music service, AllThingsD reports. Tunigo will continue to operate as normal for the time being, but all of the company’s employees will reportedly move into Spotify’s offices in Stockholm and New York to work on Spotify’s main music streaming service.
The Galaxy S4 has been cleared for government use by the U.S. Department of Defense, with Samsung’s new Knox security software deemed safe for military use. It’s the first Android-powered smartphone to ever win DoD approval, and it gets it ahead of Apple’s iPhone.
Google Glass has been getting a lot of attention recently for it’s futuristic take on wearable computing. Apple’s iWatch has got people intrigued, but it turns out that Google has been working on a watch of its own, just incase Google Glass is a little bit too weird for people.
Patents filed by Google in 2011 show that the company has been working on a wearable wrist computer. The Google Watch concept describes two touchpads on a wristband that work intandem to undertand gestures like Google has on the Google Glass pad.
Just over a month after acquiring Summly for $30 million, Yahoo! has gobbled up another smartphone app. This time it’s Astrid, a pretty task management client for Android and iOS, which has a strong focus on sharing. Astrid announced the news on its blog today.
The International Data Corporation (IDC), an firm that analyzes tech trends around the globe, released its quarterly Worldwide Tablet Market Study today, showing that tablet sales show no signs of slowing down any time soon.
The study shows that tablet shipments have increased 142 percent year over year for Q1 2013. Tablet shipments totaled 49.w million units in this first quarter, surging past the entire first two quarters of 2012 combined.
All tablet makers saw huge gains in the tablet space, though Apple’s overall share of the market is decreasing. The iPad is still the world’s largest tablet being sold, with 19.5 million shipping in the last quarter, up from 11.8 in last year’s Q1, an increase of 64 percent.
The U.S government has been warming up to consumer smartphones for some time. A couple months ago, the Pentagon announced that it will permit “the use of commercial products for classified communications for the first time.” Android handsets and iPhones are starting to be used in areas that previously didn’t offer security clearance.
In a world that has been ruled by Blackberry, the latest Samsung and Apple devices are about to be let into deeper parts of the government.
Everyone’s favorite digital rights crusaders Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have just released an annual report, ranking the biggest companies in tech for who does the best job protecting your data from being rifled through by the Federal Government.
Google’s really good about it. Apple? They’ll give away all your emails and data if the government just breathes on them, and they won’t bother telling you about it either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTyqLHnU6yk
I’m not a big fan of screen protectors; partly because they’re real pain in the ass to apply, and partly because I’ve never felt like they really added much to the equation.
But if there was ever a screen protector to get me to change my mind, its Tech21‘s new Impact Shield. The company demoed its new protector for me over Skype recently, and I came away thoroughly stunned: The protector has a strange, almost magical way of protecting the screen from not only scratches but impacts — and is self-healing. It’s also applied onto a screen in a very different manner than most other screen protectors.
Samsung has had to defend the Galaxy S4’s plastic form factor quite a bit since the device was announced back in March, and one of the ways it has done that is by touting the handsets durability. Plastic, Samsung claims, makes the device much more robust than competing smartphones because it bends and absorbs impact.
But as we suspected all along, aluminum is stronger. In a smartphone torture test performed by warranty provider SquareTrade, the Galaxy S4 fails to beat the iPhone 5 in drop tests, and even proved to be more fragile than its predecessor, the Galaxy S III.
Today AT&T updated its store trade-in program to incentivize more customers to trade in used smartphones for an upgrade. The carrier is now giving $100+ credits towards the purchase of a new smartphone with a two-year plan. The catch is that you have to trade in a smartphone that is “no more than three years old and in good, working condition.”
Apple and Samsung will again go head to head in court this November after presiding Judge Lucy Koh called for a new trial to recalculate the damages awarded by a jury last August. The move comes after Judge Koh cut $450.5 million from the $1.05 billion originally awarded to Apple due to uncertainty over the jury’s findings.
EE has today announced that its 4G network is now available in another 12 towns across the United Kingdom, bringing the total number of 4G connected towns and cities to 62 in just six months following its launch. That’s 50% of the U.K. now covered by 4G, and EE is aiming to increase that to 70% by the end of the year.
It looks like Microsoft has been taking a sneaky peek at Samsung’s guide to marketing. Rather than touting new features or specifications in its latest Windows Phone commercial, the company has taken to bashing the competition instead.
The minute-long clip sees Apple face off against Samsung during a massive wedding brawl as the two companies trade insults over smartphones.
Misleading and misunderstanding blogging and reporting this week is leading everybody into falsely believing that Intel plans to ship or support Android-based laptops.
This has sparked debate over the wisdom or folly of Android laptops.
I’ll make a case for why Android laptops are a great idea, but first let’s kill the myth that Intel announced Android laptops.
Advertising and mobile analytics company, Flurry, has released some new stats on the reach that mobile apps seem to be enjoying. The take-away here is that the number of people using mobile apps in any given day, at least the apps that Flurry tracks, seems to be growing into a sizable group of people, albeit a bit fragmented across platforms and devices.
Flurry estimates that there were 224 million active mobile users in apps tracked this past February across iOS and Android, which is a bit more than the number of active users (221 million) during the same month on laptop or desktop computers, as measured by comScore, a similar company that tracks computer user data.
