It's typical in today's digital industry that we should begin talking about a product before its would-be predecessor has even hit the market, and although we're fairly sure that Apple will be announcing a new iPad 5 at some point this fall, resident Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities already has the scoop on the iPad 6, in a note which was picked up by 9to5Mac. Apparently, it will offer a resolution exceeding the current standard of Apple's so-called Retina iPad panel, with 30-40% more pixels over the 9.7-inch diameter.
With Apple having recently dropped its big software update for iOS, it's now Microsoft's turn to come through with some big announcements for those on its own smartphone platform, and today, the software maker has unveiled the details of Update 3 for Windows Phone 8. Included will be support for 1080p displays and quad-core processors, two features that have become the de facto standard for high-end handsets, and with a new Driving Mode also thrown into the mix, the future does look somewhat brighter for the struggling ecosystem.
People may, rightly or wrongly, accuse the smartphone market of being a little on the stale side. Six years in since the market was turned upside down by Apple when the original iPhone was announced, it's arguable that not a great deal has changed since then. Yes, we've got 4G handsets and yes, they're blazingly fast when compared to the original iPhone and the HTC G1, but they essentially look the same and the form factor hasn't changed a great deal either.
It looks like HTC has beaten Samsung to the punch by launching its own smartphone with a fingerprint sensor before the Galaxy brand makers could get around to copying Apple's iPhone 5s. Announcing the One Max today, HTC becomes the second major smartphone maker to announce a new handset with a fingerprint sensing security solution in the same number of months, leaving Samsung as the only one of the 'big three' to join the fray.
The latest big Android release was definitely the Galaxy Note 3. Both big in the attention it drew and the sheer size of the device brought to market, Samsung's new phablet is proving just as popular as the two versions that came before it. No big shocks there, then.
Facebook may have once been a small hiding place where people who knew each other could chat in private, and share photos that they could feel fairly sure wouldn't be found on the greater web. That's been steadily changing over the last few years as Facebook tries desperately to reinvent itself in the face of stiff competition from Twitter, and in some ways from Google+.
As we work our way through the month of October it's surely only a matter of time until we see an invitation to Google's Nexus 5 event landing in inboxes across the blogging world. With more and more leaks of not just the hardware but also the software that it runs appearing on a seemingly daily basis, it's clear that Google's new smartphone can't be too far away.
The Nexus 5 leaks just keep on coming, and barely a day after the last photos showed up online we have now been treated to a video of what appears to be Google's next big smartphone release.
The official combination of hardware and software feature sets that ship with most devices is usually enough, but in some cases it just makes sense for developers to push the boundaries a little and extend the published capabilities of a device.
Every so often Google does something that reminds everyone of just how close to the creepy line it likes to sail. With hooks into email, social networking and of course the entire Web, Google knows just about everything there is to know about us, and what we do online.
