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 they are wont to do, J.D. Power Associates has just released its second Wireless Smartphone Satisfaction Study for 2013. Guess what? The iPhone is on top again, the second time since it claimed the title of king of all smartphones in J.D. Power’s previous Wireless Smartphone Satisfaction Study back in May.
With all the hubbub about the iPhone 5s’s wonky accelerometer, which has thrown off the iPhone’s accuracy by a couple of degrees, you’d think that iPhones from the first-generation to the iPhone 5 had perfectly accurate compasses, wouldn’t you? But such is not the case.
A year and a half ago, Bob Shor’s diabetic dad asked him if he had seen his dad take his insulin. Bob’s answer, “No, I didn’t see you take your meds” was interpreted by his father as “No, you haven’t taken them.” His dad overdosed that day, which Bob says was the reason he and his brother Rotem created MediSafe, a collaborative app that helps keep track of long-term medication.
The app will remind users when it’s time to take meds, and display dosage and an image of what the meds actually look like. There’s even a refill reminder and personalized information and details about taking the drug and effects. But the big feature is the app’s collaborative nature.
Cell phone numbers are a direct path that often lead straight to us, regardless of where we are or what we’re doing. And once we’ve given someone our number, they have it for good. And if things go south, the only option is to change your number, right?
Pretty much — but that’s easy to do if you used a new app called RingMeMaybe to give them a temporary number in the first place.
I remember when my mother used to drive around with a relatively new invention back in my childhood: a notepad that was use a suction cup mechanism to stick to the windshield of the car. She was a realtor, so she liked to have something easily accessible so she could make notes without having to fumble for a piece of paper and pen (which was also attached to the mechanism).
While this device wouldn’t have been practical for me (I’m left-handed), I’ve found in recent years that I am using my iPhone in my car for things like its GPS capabilities, to stream Rdio through my car stereo, and have my task manager at the ready for when I’m running errands. That’s why the GripGo Universal Car Mount is really appealing to me – and Cult of Mac Deals is currently offering it for just $13.99.
iOS 7 brings a ton of visual and interface changes to our favorite smart phone, not all of them easily intuited from general use.
One of these is the new fullscreen mobile Safari. The web browser’s address bar and toolbar (at the bottom) disappears when you’re browsing, and you might have figured out how to bring it back by accident, but not in a systematic way.
Nothing sucks the joy out of using a smartphone than not really being sure how to do something, so here are three ways to re-appear that sucker on your iPhone.
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.
Just as soon as I can work out which box I packed my camera in, I’ll be putting the finishing touches to my TriggerTrap review. In the meantime, the folks behind the iPhone camera-triggering gadget have managed to invent yet another TriggerTrap. And this one is even more awesome. Why? One word: Lasers.
You should really stop reading here and check out the video of the FlyKly Smart Wheel, which is utterly hilarious. In i you’ll see an urban-warrior type taking his bike up into his beautifully-designed apartment and swapping out his back wheel for the FlyKly. This is fine, until you see him lowering the monstrosity into the rear dropouts of his frame.
The big, ugly plastic wad at the wheel’s center reminds me of nothing so much as generic prosthetic limbs: paint this thing ‘skin’ color and you’ll be done.
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However, it’s this wad which holds the key to the FlyKly’s mysterious iPowers.
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.
The iPhone accounts for most of Apple’s business, but can the success of the iPhone accurately predict Apple’s stocks? No, but the iPad might be able to.
Apple has told iPhone suppliers in China to cut iPhone 5c orders for the fourth quarter following lower than expected demand for the device, The Wall Street Journal reports. Foxconn has been asked to cut orders by one-third, while Pegatron will reduce its shipments by 20%, sources claim.
Yes, it’s another iPhone 5 dock. And yes, it’s on Kickstarter. But just take a look at the Spool Dock and tell me you don’t want the hell out of it. Go on, I dare ya.
Like millions of Apple fanboys across the globe, late-night show host Conan O’Brien could not wait to update his phone to iOS 7 last month, however the results were pretty horrific, and one viewer knows exactly what caused Coco’s hellish experience – the Ginja Ninja tried to install the new OS on his unsupported iPhone 3GS.
Conan fan 4893McLovin noticed Conan’s error on the show and has now been anointed as the first viewer to have successfully challenged Conan on the Fan Correction segment of the show. Not one to be shown up, Coco crafted his own response to the error by showing a hidden segment of Eddie Cue’s presentation at the iOS 7 keynote that revealed the existence of the mystical iPhone 3GCOB.
Take a look:
Sparrow was once my favorite third-party email clients for Mac and iOS, but after its creators were bought by Google last year, the likelihood of improvements and new features seemed to go out of the window. And indeed, the app has been all but ignored since the acquisition — until it got a surprise update today.
iOS 7 had been available to the public for just 27 days as of Monday, October 14 — and it had already been installed on 71% of all iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. That’s according to the latest report from Mixpanel which suggests iOS 7 could be the fastest-spreading iOS update to date.
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.
Ok, I’ll admit it; I occasionally use Siri in the car. It’s not a perfectly hands-free system, but it is great to be able to send a quick text to let someone know I’m running late without touching the phone too much.
The other day, though, I was sitting in the car at my son’s school, waiting for the final bell to go in and get him from class. I had my iPhone set up in the car, and was sending a text to a friend. I realized that somehow, in the transition to iOS 7, I no longer had access to the Emoji keyboard.
As the iPhone was propped in it’s in-car holder (a Breffo spiderpodium), I just activated Siri, out of habit.
Apple’s iPhone trade-in program, which made its debut in the United States back in August, is now available in retail stores across the U.K. starting today. The new scheme lets consumer take in their old iPhones and trade them for Apple store credit that they can then put towards a new device.
Further evidence to suggest that the new iPhones are almost ready for their long-awaited debut on China Mobile — the world’s largest carrier — has surfaced today after both the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c gained regulatory approval for the carrier’s TD-LTE network.
For years, home automation has been the exclusive province of the very rich or extremely technical.
Companies you’ve probably never heard of, such as AMX, Control4, Crestron, Elan, HomeLogic, Colorado vNet, Vantage and Zenpanion have provided the platforms and many of the fundamental products, while integrators took care of the installation and service for many people.
Or, very dedicated and technical DIY enthusiasts have cobbled together their own ingenious solutions.
Recently, the major phone carriers have gotten into the act, and rumors suggest Google, Apple, Microsoft and other consumer electronics companies are working on home automation.
The reason everybody’s jumping is that home automation is in the process of making a transition from “hardly anybody” to “pretty much everybody.” So everybody wants a piece of what will definitely be a massive new industry.
In five years, the majority of homes in the United States are likely to have significant home automation happening in their homes — voice-controlled thermostats, Bluetooth-unlocking door locks, lights on self-learning timers, automated pet feeders, doorbells that ring your phone rather than a bell in the house and much more.
The reason? Kickstarter, mostly.
We posted all about NASA engineer Mark Roper’s gruesome, iPhone-augmented Halloween shirts last year. Since then, Mark has quit his job at NASA to focus on Halloween. The result is more designs and, even better, both an improved t-shirt and a horribly gruesome effect worthy of being designed by someone who worked on the Mars Curiosity rover.
Robots are pretty cool, but have you ever wanted to create your own iPhone controlled cyborg? Backyard Brains is banking that a lot of kids are interested in cyborg technology and neuroscience (ethical dilemmas be damned), so after three years of R&D they’ve come up with the RoboRoach – a small electronic surgery kit that lets you turn a real-life cockroach, into an iPhone-controlled cyborg for a few minutes.
The kit comes with a backpack that contains a battery and receiver you superglue to the cockroach after sanding down a patch of shell. You have to jab a groundwire into the cockroaches thorax, and then after that you carefully trim the antenna so you can stick some small electrodes onto both of them and receive signals from your iPhone. Don’t worry, the iPhone app and the cockroaches come free with the $99 kit, so you don’t have to go hunting for some behind your supermarket’s dumpster.