Google's as-yet unannounced Nexus 5 has seen its fair share of leaks of late, with videos, photos and general ramblings filling the Internet over the last week or two. There was little doubt that the handset was indeed real already, but the latest happenings make things about as official as they're going to get. At least until Google makes the Nexus 5 officially… official.
In this day and age, and with the internet so rampant with people eager for the latest news and gossip in the world of technology, new products leaking out of vendors and manufacturers is simply a way of life at this point. Even with that in mind though, it's notable just how many times the new Nexus 5 from Google has been caught on camera in both still photos and that 7-minute video that we brought you not long ago. If you can judge a phone's success on the amount of information that leaks about it before its official unveiling, then it would certainly seem that Google has a winner on its hands.
Does anyone else fondly look back on the golden days when the majority of companies announced a new product or service and then furnished us with a solid release date? No? Must just be me then. I do concede that the often cryptic clues that companies release surrounding potential releases can sometimes be fun to try and decipher and they certainly manage to keep us on our toes. The official Nestle KitKat Twitter account has been getting in on the action today by posting a number of tweets that could point to an October 28th release date for the next iteration of the Android mobile operating system.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3, the new king on the throne that was crowned just last month when the device became available worldwide, brings a lot of improvements and enhancements over the former champion, the Note 2, in terms of software and features. Hardware was different, too, agreed, but it was mainly the software improvements that set the two devices apart, or, to put more appropriately, would make you cough up dough to get your hands on Note 3 instead of Note 2.
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.
CyanogenMod remains one of the most popular after market firmware for Android devices. Renowned for its seamless, refined operation and general functionality, it is a credit to the great Steve Kondik, the man behind CM and the newly-founded Cyanogen company. Some feared that Kondik's decision to make it official, as it were, would be to the detriment of CyanogenMod, but as we've seen over the past month, it's simply not his way. Kondik has just teased CyanogenMod running on the newly-released Galaxy Note 3, and although it's not quite ready for prime time, those in ownership of the Samsung phablet finally have some good news.
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.
It looks like HTC has beaten Samsung to the punch by launching its own smartphone with a fingerprint sensor before the Galaxy brand makers could get around to copying Apple's iPhone 5s. Announcing the One Max today, HTC becomes the second major smartphone maker to announce a new handset with a fingerprint sensing security solution in the same number of months, leaving Samsung as the only one of the 'big three' to join the fray.
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.
As we work our way through the month of October it's surely only a matter of time until we see an invitation to Google's Nexus 5 event landing in inboxes across the blogging world. With more and more leaks of not just the hardware but also the software that it runs appearing on a seemingly daily basis, it's clear that Google's new smartphone can't be too far away.
