We have seen details surrounding Motorola’s next-generation flagship smartphone leak a number of times thus far. In fact, we have even seen the unreleased phone appear in a handful of videos. While different specs for the Moto X+1 have been tossed around a bit over the past couple of months, a new slip-up from an online cell phone retailer in Brazil may be the most solid leak yet.
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If you love Samsung’s big, beautiful displays but don’t want to deal with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, then this next leak is for you. @evleaks has posted a new picture of the Galaxy S5 Google Play Edition, which will have the same hardware as the Galaxy S5 but that will run on stock Android without any software additions from Samsung. This means that anyone who’s interested in using Samsung’s hardware but who isn’t interested in dealing with Samsung’s UI overlay can buy this phone from the Google Play store off contract.
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The Android vs. iOS debate will rage on until one or both of these mobile platforms are no longer market leaders. In the meantime, each operating system offers dozens of important pros and cons when compared to its rival. Android’s open nature allows for a much wider range of functionality in third-party apps, for instance, and you can see numerous examples of this in our series on great Android apps that do amazing things the iPhone can’t. On the other side of the fense, iOS offers a much smoother and more refined user experience with an app ecosystem that is second to none.
So, what is it like for a “fanboy” to make the jump from one platform to the other?
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After ten years, Google’s first attempt at creating a social network is finally coming to an end. Google announced on Monday that Orkut would be officially shut down on September 30th, 2014 to make room for the thriving social communities on YouTube, Blogger and Google+, all of which have handily outpaced Orkut’s growth over the past decade.
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The year 1973 was crucial for one for the giants of European industry. That was when Finnish Rubber Works merged with Finnish Cable Works, forming a company called Nokia Corporation. That year, Nokia had a massive consumer market blockbuster with Kontio Rubber Boot. Kontio was named after the Finnish term of endearment for “bear” that was commonly used in Middle Ages to avoid the religious taboo against using the true name of this animistic deity (Karhu).
This groundbreaking footware introduced many key features that would become staples of modern rubber boot manufacturing: a tightening strap, a reflective band and a rotationally rigid midsole construction. Kontio would define the Nokia brand in Europe during late 1970s and the 1980s.
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Apple and Samsung have been at each other’s throats for years now, bickering over mobile patents and handset design elements in courtrooms around the world. Apple is thus far the only company to score a substantial win, having been awarded nearly $1 billion in damages following a favorable decision in its first big U.S. patent trial. But while these two giants continue to do battle in courts across the globe, Apple is still one of Samsung’s biggest customers as it buys billions of dollars worth of smartphone, tablet and computer components from Samsung’s manufacturing arm.
Are these two tech titans doomed to be frenemies forever?
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More than a year ago, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began leaking thousands of confidential documents that he stole while working for the National Security Agency. The documents shined light on a number of controversial spying methods employed by the government agency, many of which were considered violations of American citizens’ privacy.
There are very good arguments for and against Snowden’s actions, and one of the most valid arguments against the leaks was the suggestion that terrorists would alter their behavior and strategies in order to avoid the now-public NSA monitoring tactics. As it turns out, the NSA has now confirmed that this is indeed the case — but the problem apparently isn’t as serious as many people had feared.
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Facebook has a ready-made excuse for people who are upset that it conducted a massive psychological experiment on some 600,000 users — they all consented to it as part of Facebook’s user agreement, which says that the company may use their data for unspecified “research.” However, Forbes did a little digging and found that Facebook didn’t add “research” as an acceptable use for user data until months after it conducted its infamous experiment.
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Samsung on Tuesday unveiled a new smartphone that doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, but it does fill a gap in the company’s 2014 smartphone lineup quite nicely. The brand new Galaxy S5 mini is a trimmed down version of the flagship Galaxy S5 both in terms of size and specs. The handset features a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED display with 720p resolution, a quad-core 1.4GHz processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, microSDXC support, an 8-megapixel rear camera and Android 4.4 KitKat. It also features all of the sensors found in the larger S5, including a heart rate monitor and fingerprint scanner.
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When Apple first ousted Google Maps from its mobile devices and released its own mapping solution for iOS, it was something of a disaster. A beautiful disaster, at times, but a disaster nonetheless. So much so that Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized for the company’s terrible Maps app and Apple recommended several third-party alternatives. In the time since Apple’s mobile Maps app debuted, however, the company has devoted tremendous resources to improving it — and now a new report claims that Apple is pushing improvements to its Maps app every single day.
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