Google's Eric Schmidt is no stranger to opening his mouth and having some strange, often outlandish words come out. The man who was famously once described as Google's 'adult supervision' during some of its most successful years, Schmidt has been known to put his foot in his mouth on more than the odd occasion.
Taking an industry like that of the smartphone and turning it on its head in the space of one keynote can't be an easy task, but the folks at Apple managed it back in 2007 when the iPhone was announced. Demonstrated on-stage with typical Steve Jobs gusto, that iPhone unveiling is still the stuff of legends, and anyone lucky enough to have been there will no doubt remember it for quite some time.
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.
The Beats Music brand has really taken the headphone and speaker market by storm, and while there are plenty of purists who would argue that the entire Beats product line is more about style than substance, there's no doubt that the foundations have well and truly been laid for a streaming music service. Speaking with The Next Web, a Beats executive has confirmed that an official iOS app is in the pipeline, and although an Android version, as well as a Web offering, will eventually become available, the release to the iTunes App Store is at the top of the company's agenda.
Samsung has been in quite a bit of hot water lately. As well as dropping two Galaxy S4 Gold Edition right after the launch of the Gold iPhone 5s, the company was then found to be severely cooking the books with certain flagship handsets in order to yield favorable results in benchmark tests. Now, it would seem the Korean giant is up to another one of its old tricks - copying Apple - and as you'll see below, the ad for its Galaxy Gear smartwatch is very much the same as that of the original iPhone.
Microsoft's Xbox LIVE is not only a great way for users to connect and enjoy multiplayer battles, but the Achievements system helps gamers to derive a sense of accomplishment from playing some of their favorite titles. Very gradually, the Redmond company has sought to spread Achievements out and beyond the confines of Xbox LIVE, and following on from Kinectimals, which brought Achievements to both iOS and Android, Wordament for Google's mobile OS will allow players to clock up 50G to their Gamerscore.
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.
Microsoft has become the latest in a long list of large developers to update one of their native mobile apps for iOS 7. The Redmond company's latest update to the Skype app for iPhone and iPad is currently propagating its way through the App Store and brings the revamped and refreshed user-interface that we have come to expect from an iOS 7 app.
Google clearly wants to take over the world with its search, mobile and desktop businesses and now it seems that it may want to take over your Windows 8 desktop, according to a tasty morsel uncovered by The Verge. More details can be found right after the jump.
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.
