Nike's FuelBand may be seen by some as a bit of a high-priced gimmick, but despite the naysayers, it continues to sell in fairly strong numbers. As well as building a growing number of admirers, FuelBand now arrives in a plethora of different colors and versions in the form of FuelBand SE, and is as stylish as it is practical. With this in mind, UI design guru Todd Hamilton has offered his take on the enigmatic Apple iWatch by basing it heavily upon close buddy Nike's likeable gizmo, and the result is truly something to behold.
Wireless charging may be a standard feature with many of the mobile industry's top smartphones, but if you happen to be in ownership of Samsung's Galaxy S4, you'll know that the device does not support it out of the box. But if you are happily wielding your Galaxy S4 and would love the option / convenience of wireless charging, you'll be pleased to learn that the official S-View Flip cover has your back. It costs $69.99, which isn't bad for a stylish all-rounder, and the added extra of inductive charging is simply the icing on the cake.
Nokia mightn't be alone in its quest to bring premium image and video-capturing capabilities to the smartphone industry, but the Finnish outfit is certainly the only one to have left DSLR manufacturers looking nervously over their shoulders. Yet Sony is very much renowned for its impressive array of cameras, and one could argue that it has a much more evolved reputation as a camera maker than a smartphone OEM. But playing to its strengths, it looks as though the eventual successor to the Xperia Z1 could up the ante as far as camera technology is concerned, with software discovered by ExperiaBlog seeming to suggest that it will bring 4K video to the fold.
I use the HTC One and iPhone 5s on a daily basis, and although there are other nice-looking handsets on the market, the general consensus is that these are two of the most beautiful currently available. But while the Apple flagship is merely four months old, the One is heading towards the latter stages of its tenure, and consumers are already eagerly waiting to see what's next from the Taiwanese company. A few rumors have been floating about with nothing really set in stone as yet, but a new HTC One M8 concept dreamt up by Google+ user Nikolai Prettner has well and truly blown us away. Check it out after the break!
We've already witnessed Apple make some significant changes to how iOS looks and feels, but we could also see Samsung following closely behind. The South Korean company is rumored to be planning big things for 2014, which will inevitably result in a number of new product releases, the first of which will be the Galaxy S5, and is rumored to be introduced to the market on February 23rd.
After being originally teased back in October of last year, the Beats Music app is now available to download for iOS, Android and Windows Phone through the relevant app stores. Beats, a company who take their music very seriously, are describing the new service as a place being "curated by people who believe music is emotion and life". The differentiating factor that exists within Beats Music appears to be the fact that the app and service is built around musical customization that exists to try and present subscribers with a perfectly curated playlist of music based on their current tastes and moods.
It's fair to say that, with iOS 7, animation is a much more prevalent feature than ever before. But thanks to the closed-source nature of the Apple firmware, customization is about as non-existent as it has ever been, but thanks to the wonderful work of the jailbreak community - namely, the Evad3rs team with their Evasi0n7 utility - we can actually now tweak the animations way beyond what we could have imagined at stock level. The Animer for iPhone tweak has been around a while to facilitate this, and in news that will certainly appease long-time users and jailbreakers, it has just been updated for iOS 7.
Whenever a significant piece of software has a lapse in security, we cannot wait, as a people, to take to the blogs, the boards, and the Twitters to lodge our unofficial, knee-jerk complaints. But as research compiled by SplashData has found, many Internet users are very blasé about security and the protection of their data, and although steps have been put in place by the likes of Google and Microsoft to ensure that our passwords meet an acceptable standard, the most popular choices remain incredibly easy for potential hackers to guess.
VLC is a household name as far as most desktop and Android users are concerned, but while the famed app did once grace a fledgling iOS App Store in its early days, it was pulled without much warning and resigned to being jailbreak-only. Thankfully, the iconic media player returned to its rightful home recently in the form of VLC v2 for iOS, and having been rejuvenated by a bunch of great improvements, the VideoLAN team is back with more enhancing features for those on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
Aside from the Apple iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy S series is easily the most talked-about smartphone on the market, and according to a new report, the Galaxy S5, which is due to be released at some point this year, will follow its Cupertino-made competitor by including a fingerprint scanner. The Touch ID feature, while not heavily lauded, has been adjudged by most to be a solid, worthy addition to the Apple iPhone 5s, and with Samsung always looking to expand and improve its roster with new and exciting marquee features, it would seem that the Korean company's next flagship will arrive with its own fingerprint-detecting technology.
