In the run-up to Windows Phone 8.1's announcement at the start of April, we heard that Cortana, Microsoft's answer to Siri and Google Now, would take elements of both pre-existing voice assistants and combine them into the best all-round voice feature in the mobile industry. Since the BUILD dev conference, we've heard a great deal about how wonderful Cortana supposedly is, although until we've seen it up against its two major adversaries, there's no telling just how it holds up. With the release of the developer preview of Windows Phone 8.1 today, though, we finally get to see first-hand if Cortana can compete with its more established peers, and the Cortana vs. Siri vs. Google Now video embedded below reveals all!
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You can now download Windows Phone 8.1 early. If you're a non-dev and want to give it a shot, here's how you can still download it.
You mightn't even know of Activator's existence, but the chances are - if you're jailbroken and running a series of tweaks - that you have the famed tweak installed on your iOS device. It enables certain actions and events to be triggered by gestures or button presses, and as a long-time jailbreaker myself, it's certainly the cornerstone of my Cydia diet. Today its inventor, Ryan Petrich, has offered a glimpse of an updated version, which offers some neat battery-triggered functions.
Last week at the BUILD developers conference, Microsoft unveiled its latest changes to the Windows operating system with Windows 8.1 Update 1. Designed with the desktop user in mind, the release offers a bunch of optimization features for those using the traditional keyboard-and-mouse set-up, and on a day that has seen official support cease for the 12-year-old Windows XP, the newly-updated edition of Windows 8.1 is now available to download.
Online retail giant Amazon is planning a smartphone later on this year packing a glasses-free 3D display, according to a new report that has surfaced. Apparently, the device will retail in September, with an announcement coming in June.
At the tail-end of last year, we presented a guide that showed jailbroken iOS 7 users how to utilize the Cydia Store for the purpose of speeding up their devices. But if you don't, for whatever reason, happen to have introduced your device to the wonders of Evasi0n, we've outlined a few tips that could help you speed up your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running stock firmware, specifically for hardware that is old, like the iPhone 4, 4s, etc.
The Galaxy S5, which Samsung announced all the way back in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, is finally upon us, and while many early adopters will be flocking to stores today in order to pick up their very own unit, many consumers remain undecided. Those in search of a high-end handset will likely be weighing their prospective Galaxy S5 purchase up against other devices on the market, such as Apple's iPhone 5s, and to help ease the decision-making process, a new, real-world speed test has emerged that pits Samsung's latest and greatest up against the coveted iPhone 5s.
BlackBerry 10 mightn't have taken off quite in the way that the company behind it had hoped, but in spite of the Canadian outfit's very public free-fall from grace, the OS itself has actually been the subject of much acclaim. The Priority Hub feature, for example, provides a novel interface through which notifications are automatically organized, making it very easy to deal with each new message, email or missed call in a swift fashion. Now, the Priority Hub has been ported to the iOS lock screen via the jailbreak community, bringing that same organized structure to those on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
The tech community seemingly cannot get enough of the so-called 'iPhone 6' just now, even on the eve of the Samsung Galaxy S5's long-awaited release. The Apple handset is not touted for release until the fall, but the notion of the device packing a notably larger display seems to grow stronger with each new report. Following on from a recent influx of schematics leaks and other info relating to the iPhone 6's form factor, a new mock-up of an iPhone case seems to indicate that the display will indeed increase in diameter, while also backing up a few other iPhone 6-related murmurings, including thinner design.
Reports pertaining to the iPhone 6 seem to change course on an almost daily basis, but there underlying theme is that Apple's next smartphone will be significantly larger than anything the Cupertino firm has released hitherto. Following on from a report by ISI analyst Brian Marshall that a bigger iPhone would prompt a spike in upgrades as well as the number of consumers switching from Android, a new report published on Thursday has somewhat echoed these sentiments.
