Apple's quarterly earnings call may have left some shareholders a tad dissatisfied, but its main rival in the mobile field - Samsung - seems to be ticking the numbers over just nicely right now. The South Korea-based company continues to make exponential strides in growth, having reported a $6.6 billion profit last quarter - a full $600 million more than the previous quarter. The $6 billion of profit in the quarter before last was itself a record, which makes the figures all the more impressive, and with devices such as the Galaxy Note 8.0 and Galaxy S IV on the horizon, one suspects the firm's profits will continue to grow throughout the course of this year and beyond.
Samsung pushes out a quite phenomenal number of handsets during the course of a year, and adding to its mammoth collection is the robust Xcover 2, built purposely for those who may regularly encounter the brunt of the varying terrain in the great outdoors. Unveiled today, it runs on Android Jelly Bean (4.1), boasts a 5-megapixel camera, and offers a 4-inch display. More details after the break.
The final quarter of 2012 saw Google make a significant impact on the mobile world with a number of great application submissions to the iOS App Store. The Chrome browser went from strength to strength, the Gmail app saw a significant update as well as the debut of the official Capture application to compliment the native YouTube app that is now available for the iPhone and iPad. The progression of their mobile apps is clearly continuing during 2013, with the first major update to the YouTube Capture app going live today.
We are almost into the end of the first month of the year, and if you are like me, every year you set out to be more productive than the year before, ending needless hours of watching useless online content. Apple is making it just a little bit easier to stick to the promise that you have made to yourself by offering some of the most popular productivity apps on the Mac App Store at a discounted rate in a promotional series known as Get Stuff Done.
With the Surface Pro almost upon us, Microsoft has naturally offered consumers a subtle nudge as to why the tablet + ultrabook is the right device for them. Since consumers and commentators have doubted the Surface RT's credentials as a true PC (for obvious reasons), the Redmond company has felt inclined to remind the market of the Surface Pro's PC prowess. While the RT has come under fire for not running legacy apps, lacking power, and generally failing in many of the key areas one would expect a PC to deliver, the Surface Pro is a different animal. And boy, do Steve Ballmer and Co. want to emphasize that point.
It's the archetypal cycle of an upcoming device; the talk begins, the rumors start to swirl, and after a certain period of time, the supposed 'sightings' begin to emerge. In the case of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, which has already been confirmed as arriving at MWC by the Korean company's Vice President along with a set of leaked specs and images, that point of a leaked image looks to be upon us, and unsurprisingly, it looks almost identical to the Galaxy Tab 10.0.
The Genius Behind Microsoft’s Kinect Sensor Wants To Bring Motion Sensing To Your Smartphone [VIDEO]
The Kinect peripheral has been a revelation for Microsoft and its Xbox 360 console, enticing a new consumer base - as well as existing users - into enjoying a type of interaction only previously available on the Nintendo Wii. Now it has emerged that PrimeSense, the company behind the award-winning Kinect technology, is aiming its visor towards a key area in tech space right now - the mobile market.
As most of you will know by now, Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher will be playing the late, great Steve Jobs in a movie about the Apple co-founder, and although we've seen stills of Kutcher clad in his Jobs get-up, we finally have the opportunity to see him in action. In a clip courtesy of EntertainmentWeekly, he's seen having a heated debate with Josh Gad, who plays Steve Wozniak in the jOBS movie, and although it's only a short snippet, it gives a general idea as to how both actors represent their respective characters.
There's been a lot of talk over the last few months about the future of jailbreaking and whether or not we will continue to see jailbreaks actively worked on by the dev-teams as Apple make internal security changes to iOS. There's no denying that the mood within the jailbreak community has been extremely sombre of late as users live without that elusive device liberation on iOS 6 and newer devices, but it looks like things are about to take a turn for the positive.
The wait is almost over for those who have been anxiously anticipating the release of the jOBS biopic starring Ashton Kutcher. We've been kept regularly informed about the progress of the movie from the beginning of shooting, with the odd official image being released along the way to show exactly how convincing Kutcher will be in his portrayal of the iconic Apple co-founder.

