A number of new research studies into the effectiveness, responsiveness and overall quality of smartphone and tablet touchscreens has found that Apple Inc. is still leading the pack. Mobile ad company Agawi has been putting a number of popular iOS and Android devices through their paces in an attempt to measure the performance of the touchscreen technology on the device, with the results putting the fruit company way ahead of the competition.
There's been a significant amount of speculation whether or not Samsung is on the verge of announcing a device with a curved display. We've been treated to leaked information from internal sources as well as the odd sneak previews of the device for good measure, but now we have official word that the smartphone does indeed exist. Samsung themselves have announced that the Galaxy Round is in production and will be released almost immediately in Korea.
Google is as serious about its Android smartphone and tablet platform as it can be, and the latest “discovery” by François Beaufort is a definite testament to that. The Chromium expert noted a feature in the latest beta of Google Chrome for desktop that allows developers to control their Android devices directly from their desktop, thanks to an experimental screencast feature that Chrome beta carries.
The newly-released iPhone 5s comes in three distinct colors - a first for the Cupertino company - one of which has been dubbed as the “Gold” iPhone. The champagne colored device does closely resemble a shade of the precious metal, but calling it “Gold” seems to have ticked off some people in Taiwan. Hence, HTC has come up with their own version of a gold HTC One - not just in color, but actually 18-carat gold used for coating the device.
Over the past couple of years, many suggestions have been made that smartphones and tablets, as well as other digital devices, will begin to take advantage of flexible display technology. Yet while the concepts and such have been aplenty, we've yet to see a smartphone rocking a flexible display, but for those sufficiently intrigued, you won't have to wait much longer to see one. Samsung, as it does so often, is first to the draw, and its 5.7-inch Galaxy Round is said to feature a flexible panel around the edges, something which was confirmed by a Samsung executive at the end of last month.
For some reason unbeknown to the overwhelming majority of Samsung users, the Korean company decided to beset its Galaxy Note 3 with a region lock, but thanks, as ever, to the tireless and dedicated work of the folks over at XDA-Developers, a workaround is at hand. It does require root access, but provided you're okay with that, this is easily the simplest, cheapest, and most effective way of bypassing Samsung's restrictions. Details, as well as all of the relevant download information, can be found after the break!
All major manufacturers in the mobile industry are consistently trying to improve the devices that they launch by including some kind of innovation that will set them apart from the competition. As we know, innovation isn't always possible on the scale that some would like, so when in doubt, the next best thing is to take inspiration from those around you. It seems that the monstrous HTC One Max may have been a little inspired by Apple's inclusion of Touch ID in the recently released iPhone 5s, and will launch with similar fingerprint scanning capabilities.
Leaks are becoming part and parcel of any big smartphone release these days, and it’s becoming increasingly rare that a new handset is announced without at least the main talking points already out in the public domain. The iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c suffered such a fate, and it's starting to look like the unannounced Nexus 5 from Google and LG may suffer a very similar fate.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 - a massive upgrade from last year’s Note 2 phablet - is barely a few weeks old as of now, but already, a different variant has surfaced, and one that might excite users quite a bit. In line with expectations and rumors, Samsung has unveiled a dual-SIM version of the Galaxy Note 3 for a select region of the world, starting with China.
When Google, sorry, Motorola announced the Moto X, the smartphone maker lauded its software enhancements almost as much as some of the people who got to play with it did. Active Notifications were perhaps top of the list of new software features that caught our attention, but the Moto X's touchless controls were probably a close second.
