With leaks piling up and everyone pretty confident about what the new iPhone(s) will look like already, all that's really left to the imagination is when we will be first shown what we will hopefully be able to buy shortly after.
Samsung is licking its wounds today after IDC estimated that it saw a very rare year-on-year drop in smartphone market share during the second quarter of 2014, which will concern a company that is historically used to its percentages going in the opposite direction.
Sometimes you read something and then have to make sure that it's not April 1st, but alas, today is not April Fools Day and unfortunately, this report from Reuters appears to be far from a joke. If it is indeed accurate, the Russian government has apparently asked Apple to hand over the source code for both iOS and the OS X in a bid to try and make sure that neither can be used to spy on it.
In the coming weeks, some parts of the United States will be offering what has become known as a 'tax-free weekend' during which select products can be bought without having to pay tax on them. That sounds like the kind of thing that we could get behind, and Apple is trying to make sure that those living in the right state are able to take advantage of the situation by, you guessed it, buying some shiny new Apple gear.
Does that iPad Air just not cut it for you? Do you really, and we mean really need more power than an iPad can afford or simply need to use so-called real apps? Is money no object in the pursuit of something that Apple is unwilling to offer?
We are back today with five more iPhone and iPad apps that have gone free for a limited time over on the iTunes App Store. These apps are valued at $32 in total and so are worth downloading on your iOS devices.
Since being announced at this year’s BUILD developers’ conference, the tech world has remained fascinated by Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8.1. Given that Cortana, the company’s first mobile voice assistant, has commanded the lion’s share of attention since rolling out with WP8.1, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that in today’s update to the mobile software, it’s once again the center of attention. As well as offering some improvements to the current Cortana set-up, the feature is now rolling out across several new markets as a result of the bump, and with a number of general tweaks to Windows Phone 8.1 across the board, this is a pretty significant enhancement.
As our smartphones, watches, tablets and even cars have begun to make ever-increasing use of battery power, those batteries haven't quite managed to keep up. We're charging our smartphones at least once a day, and the new smartwatches on the market don't do much better. Cars need recharging at worryingly short intervals, and at this point it's arguable that we've been held back by the amount of juice we can give things. Something has to change.
Critics of Apple have suggested that the iPhone range has only seen incremental upgrades over the past few years, and given the lack of NFC, the late showing of LTE and the 4-inch display of the current flagship, they do have a point. But while the continued processor / graphics bumps and camera upgrades don't seem a world apart from release to release, the leap in overall performance is quite noticeable when you skip a generation or two. Case in point, the new release of the graphically-intensive Modern Combat 5, which, as you'll see below, is quite a different animal on an iPhone 4S versus the current but not high-end iPhone 5c.
If you've been on the hunt for a secure, hassle-free app offering encrypted communication, then a newly-released utility over at the App Store might just pique your interest. Sure, it's not the first of its kind -- there are many such apps touting all manner of robust features to protect your correspondence from prying eyes. But with its sheer simplicity and ease-of-use, it's tailor-made for the layman, and below, you can check out all of the details as well as that download link.
