That fancy Rolex face you’ve downloaded for your smartwatch won’t be available for much longer if luxury watchmakers get their way. A number of the world’s leading watch brands are clamping down on copycat faces designed for smartwatches and hope to get them banished from the Internet, according to a new report.
For a flagship device, Samsung’s Galaxy S5 doesn’t exactly sound like it’s flying high. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Samsung dramatically overestimated how many people were hankering after its new handset, with the result being that unsold units are now “piling up in warehouses.”
Although the S5 has sold around 12 million units in its first three months, that is substantially less than the numbers of the previous generation Galaxy S4, which sold around 4 million more in that same time frame. This would be bad news at any time, but Samsung was reportedly so gung-ho about the S5’s sales prospects that it actually increased production by 20%.
Amazon will roll out a new, standalone video streaming service next year that won’t be bundled with a $99 Prime subscription, according to sources familiar with its plans. The retail giant hopes to take on rivals like Netflix and Hulu and undercut their prices in an effort to attract customers.
Nokia’s decision to sell its smartphone business to Microsoft and leave Windows Phone behind was an excellent choice, it seems. The Finnish firm today announced its first piece of hardware following the sale, and it’s a stunning iPad mini clone called the N1 that’s powered by Android 5.0 Lollipop.
New York’s Times Square is about to get one of the world’s largest advertising video screen billboards — and Google is its debut customer.
The screen is an epic eight stories high, runs an entire block, and is made up of a mind-blowing 24 million pixels. According to reports, Google snapped up the ad space the moment it became available and paid for an exclusive, long-term deal. The search giant will take over the screen on November 24, with an as-yet unrevealed campaign that runs through the New Year.
It’s not currently known exactly how much Google shelled out, but according to the owners of the megascreen, ad space costs an enormous $2.5 million for four weeks, making this one of the most expensive outdoor ads in the world.
Samsung just can’t leave Apple alone. When it’s not mocking the Cupertino company in ads, or pleading for its chip-making business, it’s stealing its ideas.
Today, Samsung announced two new creations rolling off its Xerox machine out of its R&D labs: an iBeacon-style proximity beacon technology, and an OS X Yosemite Continuity-inspired feature that lets users sling webpages, phone calls and much more from one device to another.
Want to read an impartial, in-depth review of Samsung’s latest Gear S smartwatch? Why not read one from your old trusty friends at Samsung itself.
In an hilarious titled “unofficial” review, Samsung’s official blog takes a few minutes out of its busy Samsung-promoting day to, well, promote Samsung.
Describing what sounds like the world’s best ever gadget, Samsung’s Corporate Communications team try their damndest to turn out a 1,000-word review which doesn’t make the Gear S sound like Samsung just threw everything smartwatch-related at the wall and hoped something would stick.
Read on to find out what they concluded. (Spoiler: they really, really liked it.)
The YouTube music streaming service you’ve been hearing about for months is finally here. It’s called YouTube Music Key, and it lets subscribers stream and save high-quality music and music videos on the web and on Android and iOS devices. For now, however, you’ll need an invite to use it.
Things get weird when Samsung stops copying Apple and tries to do its own thing, and as if to remind us of that salient fact, the company tapped famed Korean rapper Mad Clown, to blast out rap on its new corporate sustainability animated rap video.
The Samsung rap video highlights the company’s positive stats on diversity on work-life, but fails to mention some of the grimmer facts that were discovered in its sustainability report that was published earlier this year.
Samsung posted its bizarre rap video this morning, boasting sick statistic-laced rhymes like “Samsung, we 280,000 humans, 40 percent 112,000 women. You don’t have to worry after giving birth.” If that sick line doesn’t make you want to sign up to build the next Galaxy S6, just listen to the rest of the catchy raps in the video above.
Xiaomi has quickly become the world’s third largest smartphone supplier, thanks to its cheap Apple-esques devices, and all that copying is about to pay off big time. CNBC reports that the Chinese startup is raising $1.5 billion in capitol, the largest private financing deal of since Facebook in 2011.
Negotiations haven’t been finalized, but investors include Russian Internet company DST – which backed Facebook, Airbnb, and Alibaba – with a valuation expected to top $40 billion.
It’s easy to point a finger at Xiaomi, the Chinese phone maker that clearly draws a lot of… inspiration from Apple. And there’s Samsung, of course. But there’s another copycat offender out there that’s almost just as bad, if not worse: Lenovo.
The Chinese manufacturer has a new phone coming out called the Sisley S90. Excuse the fact that the device looks just like an iPhone 6; its website is basically a carbon clone of Apple’s.
WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging platforms on the planet, finally offers one of the most basic messaging features — the ability to tell you when your messages have been read. The app will now display blue checks instead of green ones next to messages that recipients have seen.
Google Maps for Android is the latest Google app to get a Material Design makeover for Android 5.0 Lollipop, following the improvements to Calendar on Monday. It’s not just more colorful than it was before, however; you’ll also find new services built–in, including Uber and Open Table.
Advanced Warfare, the latest shooter form Activision’s hugely successful Call of Duty series, is out now on PC and consoles, and just like last year’s title, there’s a mobile companion app to go with it. Available now for Android and iOS, the free download lets you access your clan stats, edit your emblems, customize your classes, and more.
Samsung as good as pioneered the “bigger is better” approach to mobile device display size, so what do you do when Apple plans to launch a 12.9-inch iPad to compete with your Galaxy Note Pro 12.2? Build a bigger tablet, of course.
According to new reports coming out of Korea, Samsung is planning to launch a new 13-inch tablet by the end of the year. Although details currently remain scarce, it is reported that Samsung may adopt an LCD display for its 13-inch tablet, rather than the Super AMOLED used for devices like the Galaxy Tab S series.
Amazon Prime has always been a pretty incredible deal, and it just keeps getting better. As of today, Amazon is giving all subscribers unlimited photo storage at no extra cost with a new cloud-based backup service called Prime Photos.
Google’s been hard at work overhauling all of its apps for Android 5.0 Lollipop, and we’ve already seen the fruits of its labor inside the latest versions of Gmail, Google+, and Google Play. The next big update will be for the search giant’s Calendar app, and it will deliver a gorgeous new look and awesome new features.
Google’s co-founder Larry Page partook in a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, published Friday. Among other topics, he talks about Google’s oppository approach to business compared to Apple — epitomized by a story about Steve Jobs.
“He would always tell me, You’re doing too much stuff,” Page says. “I’d be like, You’re not doing enough stuff.”
BlackBerry is rolling out a number of new features for BBM that give you greater control over the content and messages you share with friends. In addition to Snapchat-inspired self-destructing messages, the release also brings the ability to retract messages you wish you hadn’t sent.
If dressing up as a ghost and going to a party doesn’t quite give you the fright you were hoping for on Halloween, how about staying in and scaring yourself silly with some of the most terrifying games you’ll ever play? We’ve picked out eight classic horrors that are guaranteed to give your the creeps, whether you’re playing on console, PC or smartphone.
So, turn off the lights, wrap yourself in your favorite blanky, and tell your neighbors to ignore your screams.
Andy Rubin, co-founder and former head of Android, has left Google to start up a hardware incubator dedicated to building robots.
Rubin helped establish Android as the world’s most widely-used mobile operating system after it was bought by Google in 2005, before switching to run Google’s robotics business last year.
Reports about a Microsoft wearable device have been circulating for a while, and now the good folks from Redmond, WA have finally made it official: a Microsoft fitness band is here, and it works on both Android and iOS.
Like the Apple Watch and Galaxy Gear, the appropriately-named Microsoft Band tracks steps and heart rate, as well as showing you phone notifications in the form of text, email, and Twitter alerts.
“It’s the most advanced band we’ve seen in terms of technology on the wrist,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Devices and Services told The Verge. “[I]t’s really designed to do two things: have people live healthier, and be more productive, by having a band that can serve on the opposite side of your watch, worn 24 hours a day, and get some of the most accurate data that you can possibly get.”
That’s not the end of Microsoft’s fitness-tracking ambitions, though.
The iPhone 6 is obliterating Samsung’s Note 4 in sales, and could even outsell it 10x according to a Korean analyst.
In a note to clients, Shinhan Investment’s Kim Young-chan wrote that the iPhone “will outsell the Galaxy Note 4 by tenfold, with 80 million units shipped worldwide in the October-December period.” Young-chan adds that, “Other market watchers also are expressing doubts about the performance of Korean tech giants.”
By far the biggest downside of the modern smartwatch is their lousy battery life. If you’re lucky, you’ll get around two days of use in between charges from an Android Wear device, but the vast majority require top-ups every night. There is one, however, that promises to last a week, thanks to its clever use of not one but two displays.
Android has yet again increased its lead in U.S. market share as its rivals give up precious points, according to the latest data from Kantar WorldPanel. Google’s popular platform now commands an impressive 61.8 percent share of the smartphone market, which is close to double the 32.6 percent now held by iOS.
