Even though playing Angry Birds is seen almost as a rite of passage for all new smartphone users, maker Rovio's presence in the world of entertainment now spans a far greater playing field than that very simple, addictive original title. Numerous spin-offs have ensued, and with products ranging from plush toys to phone cases and an Angry Birds movie in the pipeline, the Finnish outfit is easily among the most successful developers in mobile space. Today, the company has announced Angry Birds Go!, a racing game bringing Mario Kart-like fare to those annoyingly endearing little creatures. It will launch on December 11th, and we've got all of the details for your after the break!
Next year should follow the usual prose when it comes to the technology industry, but one project that stands out as, quite literally, a potential eye-opener, is Google's Glass. Having first been teased last year, it has been developed and enhanced considerably during its tenure as the Big G's most exciting up-and-coming, and such is the level of work being put in behind the scenes, that it would seem as though the search giant is already working on a model beyond the inaugural Google Glass Explorer Edition.
The LG-made Nexus 5 looks set to be the next big thing from Google, and rumors have been rife pertaining its specifics and release date. It's expected that the search giant will unveil the handset at some point this month alongside Android 4.4 KitKat, and new images out of Russia appear to throw a little more weight behind the claims. The shots show what is alleged to be the device connected via the USB / power socket, and as you'll see below, looks largely similar to the Korean company's recently announced G2 phablet.
People may, rightly or wrongly, accuse the smartphone market of being a little on the stale side. Six years in since the market was turned upside down by Apple when the original iPhone was announced, it's arguable that not a great deal has changed since then. Yes, we've got 4G handsets and yes, they're blazingly fast when compared to the original iPhone and the HTC G1, but they essentially look the same and the form factor hasn't changed a great deal either.
The latest big Android release was definitely the Galaxy Note 3. Both big in the attention it drew and the sheer size of the device brought to market, Samsung's new phablet is proving just as popular as the two versions that came before it. No big shocks there, then.
Tutorial on how you can root Samsung Galaxy Note 3 running Android 4.3 the easy way using Chainfire, auto-root of which has served a viable, working solution for a lot of Android devices.
The Nexus 5 leaks just keep on coming, and barely a day after the last photos showed up online we have now been treated to a video of what appears to be Google's next big smartphone release.
Switching between running apps on a smartphone or tablet is something that users just expect to be possible. Computers have no problems running multiple programs within different windows, so why can't mobile devices do it efficiently, right? Well, there is a little more complexity to handling this type of expensive multitasking on a small portable device, but we do live in an age where our mobile phones and tablets can handle this pretty adequately. With that said, sometimes adequate just isn't good enough which is why Switchr for Android is getting so much praise.
The new versions of Android have been arriving thick and fast over the past year, and although Android 4.3 Jelly Bean is still only a couple of months old, Android 4.4 KitKat has already been confirmed by Google. Since it first came to light that Android 4.4 was incoming, the tech world has been diligent as ever in its search for details, and has just unearthed some screenshots of the upcoming release in action. As you'll spot below, those previously-visited UI tweaks are present for all to see, as well as larger home screen icons.
Samsung, it would seem, simply cannot stop selling smartphones, and with the Galaxy Note having only been released a matter of weeks ago, rumor has it that the next flagship - the Galaxy S5 - could be set to arrive as soon as January. If true, it would be a real break away from the spring-summer launches we've witnessed these past couple of years, and would leave Galaxy S4 users feeling more short-changed than they perhaps already do.
