The festive season may be over for most, but in celebration of the new calendar year, there seems to be no-end of promotional offers on apps for mobile users. With Sephora throwing out promo codes for iOS apps like confetti, Android users are certainly not being left out, and Agent - a 5-in-1 smart assistant for those running Google's mobile operating system - has just gone free. Check the details after the break!
Nokia, once the market leader in the mobile industry, placed its faith heavily in the Windows Phone ecosystem - a decision that, at the moment, doesn't appear to have paid dividends. The Finnish company has long since created decent smartphones, but with WP struggling, the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC have continued to dominate. Microsoft's purchase of Nokia's products and services dept. back in September seemed to indicate that Nokia and WP would continue to collaborate as an exclusive unit, however the much-rumored Nokia Android smartphone has just been leaked from a reputable source.
Since Apple announced support for official MFi (Made for iPhone) gaming controllers with iOS 7, the major peripheral makers have been quick to announce and release some of their creations. However, those we've seen hitherto have shared one common trait - they're all tailored specifically to the iPhone. With cases that clip perfectly onto the form factor of the Apple smartphone, those on the iPad and iPod touch have been largely cast aside, but now, in the RP One, avid mobile gaming fans have an Xbox-esque controller to truly enhance the general user experience.
With the news that digital music sales have fallen for the first time ever recently, music streaming services like Spotify and Rdio are becoming increasingly popular. Microsoft's Xbox Music is a similar proposition to what those aforementioned services offer, with Google also throwing its hat into the music screaming arena via Google Play Music.
The popular BiteSMS app has just been updated with full support for iPhone 5s. The BiteSMS team have been pushing out builds thick and fast over the festive season. In the last eleven days there has been a total of six releases to the BiteSMS test repository, with each one completing a small part of the puzzle that will ultimately involve a release of stable version of BiteSMS that supports the latest firmware as well as modern iPhones with 64-bit processors.
So here we are again. Another Tuesday, and another iOS beta release has winged its way out of Apple's developer program and onto iPhones, iPads and iPod touches the world over. One of those iPhones is in my possession, and I've been using iOS 7.1 beta 3 for a few hours now. The verdict? Well, it's iOS 7, but even though the big point-o release of September saw changes on a grand scale, somehow Apple is still finding design tweaks to make, and buttons to fiddle with. In the third beta release of iOS 7.1, someone in Cupertino's been at the interface design once again.
We're currently well into the opening lap of the renewed console battle between Sony and Microsoft, and with the latter having stepped out and claimed a haul of 3 million Xbox One units pushed before the turn of the new year, its Japanese adversary has well and truly trumped it with the revelation that 4.2 million units were sold as of December 28th.
It's fair to say that as a company, Apple tends to do things rather differently compared with its rivals, and while this can sometimes be of infinite benefit to the consumer market, at other times, it just ends up costing more money.
Google Glass may have been one of tech's main talking points over the past 18 months or so, but it is by no means alone in its quest to introduce face computers to the fore. In fact, one of its main competitors, GlassUp, is busily showcasing its first prototype at CES this week, and although it doesn't have the kind of resources of the Mountain View-based search giant, its efforts are certainly impressive nonetheless.
CES always kicks the tech calendar off with a bang, and having already seen Pebble's Steel smartwatch, Samsung's curved television sets and other such niceties, Sony has come through with its own interesting product for the mobile scene. After a successful launch of the PlayStation 4, the Japanese company has refocused its attention on its smartphone endeavors, and the Xperia Z1 Compact is a device that brings typical high-end features and hardware, but on a smaller scale than the Xperia Z1.
