Unless you have been in a dark cave for the last few months, you are likely aware that Samsung is gearing up to release a massive upgrade to its flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S IV. While vague details have been making their way onto the Internet, we now have concrete information on when it might be announced and hit shelves.
2013 seems to be a year of high-end Android smartphones with rather-insanely-large screens. The trend started with Samsung’s Galaxy Note series last year (if you don’t want to consider Dell Streak, that is), and a lot of manufacturers seem to have caught up on the idea. Considering that Note II is a very popular phablet, we’ve then seen HTC Droid DNA enter the arena, and even Chinese manufacturers like Oppo, with their Find 5, seem to be jumping the bandwagon.
Calling all Trekkies: your long wait for the next installment is now finally over! Well, that is of course, if you were waiting for the Star Trek app, which is now available for those on iOS and Android. Director J.J. Abrams’ next Star Trek release - Star Trek Into Darkness - is set to premiere in May, and in order to tide fans over until then, Paramount has launched an app offering a plethora of content as well as the chance to grab some prizes.
The folks of the XDA-Developers forums are old hands at solving problems and limitations with mobile devices, particularly those of the Android variety, and in the latest, one member has come through with a nifty wireless charging solution. The mod, which costs around $25 in supplies, can be completed in around ten minutes, and the final result is a fully-functional, wirelessly juiced Samsung Galaxy S III.
Temple Run, like the vast majority of mobile success stories of the past five or six years, is an incredibly simple, yet challenging and addictive title which sees an Indiana Jones-type run through a temple, evading various obstacles in order to achieve the highest score possible. Not only has it ranked highly in terms of playability and popularity, but is is also free of charge, and with the sequel - Temple Run 2 - getting 2013 off to a great start on the mobile gaming front, it was always going to be an instant hit. However, the second installment has exceeded all expectation, having been downloaded an incredible 50 million times in two weeks, and on the way to becoming the fastest-selling mobile game in history.
Google’s has always had a rather funny and intriguing way of announcing new Android versions, coupling the news with the installation of a new Android statue at their campus. We’d seen these sculptures being erected for Froyo, then Gingerbread, Honeycomb, for Ice Cream Sandwich, and then Jelly Bean. Thus, it was no surprise when people went crazy over a certain Google+ post from Google’s Android community manager, Paul Wilcox, that indicated a new statue having been installed at the company’s official campus!
Android may never have gained this much popularity as a smartphone and tablet operating system had it not been for a few certain reasons, one of them being the open source nature of the platform and the availability of custom firmware for various devices. You would be aware that Android, at its core, is based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). There are now several ROMs out there for a variety of phones and tablets that are rooted directly into the AOSP itself. However, the trendsetter was, and will always be, CyanogenMod.
One of the best things you can get out of technology is making your life easier by digitizing a huge chunk of your daily routine. Thanks to the smart devices that our phones have become today, we have gotten rid of a lot of stuff, like paper grocery lists, address books, pocket diaries and the like, replacing them with one intelligent device. However, there’s no limit to what you can imagine, right? So imagine if your phone was smart enough to perform various tasks for you on its own, without requiring you to perform actions like, say, triggering the text-to-speech engine through the device’s settings so that emails and messages can be read out load when you need your hands free. Having a smartphone that’s actually this smart would be cool, won’t it?
If you're the kind of person hoarding thousands of contacts in your smartphone's address book, you will be more than aware of how difficult it can be to keep up with them. Not only that, but when someone you've spoken to only once or twice rings up after a prolonged amount of time, you could be forgiven for completely forgetting who they are.
Several months ago, rumors starter swirling that Google and LG might be getting ready to unleash a new Nexus 4 in white color. To everyone’s surprise (or perhaps not), an entire photo gallery of pictures depicting a new white version of the device has surfaced, suggesting that a release might be closer than most of us might have expected.
