Although picking and choosing a smartphone from the hundreds available on the market can be a tricky task indeed, finding an adequate protective shell once you've unboxed your prized gadget can often be an equally tedious task. The case makers are vast, with each and every one looking to grab your attention, and although most fail with generic, unremarkable products, occasionally one does come along with that 'wow' factor.
As with Instagram, which was recently bought out by Facebook for a whopping one billion dollars, I often wonder whether the guys over at Rovio could have predicted just how successful their mobile title Angry Birds would grow to become. Beginning on iOS, the title is now available on most platforms facilitating casual gaming, with Microsoft's Xbox 360, the Sony PlayStation 3, and Nindendo's 3DS also soon to join the party, as we revealed yesterday.
Although we have seen snippets of what is purported to be the next iPhone, history forces us not to take anything as a given. In times past, the blogs and various tech affiliated sites have been almost certain of what Apple was preparing, only to be completely thrown off by the eventual product. Still, that hasn't stopped TaoBao, a Chinese site similar to Amazon, from taking pre-orders of the device, and as you would expect, the images on their landing page are based purely on the rumors we've been seeing and hearing for quite a while now.
Apple and Google follow very different principles with their mobile platforms. Apple maintains a tightly closed system where they put their software on their own hardware whereas Google has a much more open policy. Google licenses Android to companies like Samsung, HTC and Motorola which manufacture their own hardware and run it on customized versions of Android. While Apple’s way has plenty of advantages there is one area where it lags behind Google: sheer units sold and total market share. Android smartphones as a whole have been dominating the iPhone in USA for quite some time now. In a latest report, its dominance has been reaffirmed. Check out the details after the jump.
Google Chrome has been available for iOS devices for just over a week and has already managed to steamroll its way to the top of the free download charts in the App Store. That fact alone should prove to doubters that Chrome definitely has a home on Apple's mobile platform, but as is always the case with a lot of high profile applications, they can and are always made a tad bit better with the help of the jailbreak community.
If you're not a keen follower of Apple rumors, you may want to look away now, for in breaking the continual flow of iPad Mini rumors comes an update on the state of play regarding the next iPhone. The device, which, unlike the iPad talk, is actually backed up by hardware "leaks", looks set to become a little longer, and the display, which has sat at 3.5-inches since the very first day it hit the market back in 2007, is expected to increase rather significantly, measuring in at nearer the 4-inch mark.
Although Google+ has sat around in a somewhat dormant state since arriving last year, Google has continued to maintain it has big plans for its social network. The mobile market, a field in which Facebook has continued to disappoint, will obviously be a key area to corner if Google+ is to be a success, and the official iOS app has just been given a pretty significant update, taking the version number up to 3.0.
As has been discussed on numerous occasions, photo-based apps are seeing an unprecedented rise in popularity, thanks to the advancements of smartphone and tablet cameras as well as sharing mediums, notably Instagram. Although the influx of new apps means a lot more choice for us, it also unfortunately means developers, looking for a quick buck, are capitalizing on the current trend by releasing sub-par apps which promise much yet deliver precious little.
Twitter’s iOS and Android native app offerings came under fire when they announced a complete redesign earlier this year. They removed established power user features that were first introduced in the Tweetie iPhone app (that Twitter acquired). This resulted in many folks jumping ship* to third party Twitter apps. Now, Twitter is doing their best to keep the new design while bringing back the power user features that were lost in the major update to version 4.
Although it's a wonderful thing to be able to carry a decent snapper at all times in the form of a smartphone, it has been argued that the mundane methods for editing them with a simple effect or a movable focus has sapped much of the creativity that goes with creating a well-edited image.
