909.18

+5.31

' Investors

Google Play, Verizon launch could boost Samsung Galaxy S4 sales past already high expectations

Zac Hall

Samsung Galaxy S4

Samsung has proven almost effortlessly that the 5-inch smartphone has its place in the hands of the masses as it is on track to selling 10 million handsets in its first month, The Korea Times reports.

The company has plenty of room for sales to exponentially grow upward, possibly past their own already high expectations, as the smartphone that has taken the Android world by storm has yet to actually launch on Verizon in the States.

Verizon seems readily positioned to launch the Galaxy S4 as it announced earlier this week that it plans to sell the Samsung smartphone a week sooner than expected.

Samsung’s co-CEO Shin John-Kyun says the company expects the Galaxy S4 to be the fastest selling smartphone in the company’s history.

“We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than the previous model S3,” Samsung Electronics co-CEO Shin Jong-Kyun told reporters at an industry forum in Seoul, Thursday.

We got our hands on the Galaxy S4 last month for a review and gave it flying colors. Read more

Twitter launches official app for Google Glass with focus on photo sharing, Google announces SDK

Mark Gurman

Screenshot_2013-05-15-16-01-00

Twitter today officially launched its own official client for Google Glass. The app has a focus on sharing photos, but also allows you to keep up with your mentions and DMs.

With Twitter for Google Glass, you can share photos to Twitter. The Tweet will automatically include the text, “Just shared a photo #throughglass.”

In addition to sharing photos, you can also keep up with the people you follow on Twitter through notifications — for mentions, DMs and Tweets from users for whom you’ve turned on notifications. As always, you can reply to, retweet or favorite these Tweets.

Those with Google Glass can grab the free app here.

In addition, Google today announced an official SDK for Google Glass. The software development kit will allow offline apps to be created for the device. The company also shared that Facebook, Tumblr, CNN, and Elle apps are on the way.

Read more

Microsoft’s internal “Scroogled” video leaks, mocks Google’s own Chrome ads [video]

Jordan Kahn

Another instalment in Microsoft’s “Scroogled” smear campaign attempting to point out the downsides of using Google services. While Microsoft has released many ads attacking Gmail, search and other Google products as part of the 7 figures it plans to drop on the campaign, this one was apparently supposed to be an internal video for employees anyway.

Whether it was a controlled leak or not, the ad, which takes cues from one of Google’s own Chrome ads, has happened to make its way online right in the middle of Google I/O and it doesn’t appear that a take down notice is getting issued.

Google has responded to the ads several times calling Microsoft’s approach ‘misleading and intellectually dishonest.’ Read more

Google+ Hangouts will soon include SMS integration

Zac Hall

unnamed

Google announced its new cross-platform messaging service called Hangouts at Google I/O yesterday, which prompted many users to wonder if Google had plans to bring SMS and messaging unification to the Hangouts inbox.

Droid Life points us to comments by Dori Storbeck, who manages the Hangouts and Chat Google+ community, which confirm integration with SMS is highly requested and coming soon.

gplus-sms-650x294

We expect SMS integration will only be available on Android as iOS doesn’t allow the necessary hooks to pull off the feature, which makes the platform that much more appealing for fans of the Hangouts service.

Hangouts launched on the Play Store for Android and App Store for iOS yesterday, as well as Google+ or Gmail on the desktop. Read more

Samsung hints at Galaxy S4 software update to address storage discrepancies

Zac Hall

Samsung has received criticism for the amount of storage its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone allows users to access out of the box, but CNET reports that Samsung may be considering ways it could optimize the operating system and free up more space for users.

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone runs a custom variant of Android, which allows the company to include features not on other Android phones including Google’s own Nexus phones, but the feature-heavy OS comes at the cost of using half the capacity on a 16GB device.

We’re quite fond of the software featured on the Galaxy S4 as it allows it to stand out from other comparable smartphones, and the Galaxy S4 allows users to add to its storage with microSD cards which you can buy for less than 10 bucks in many cases, something the Apple iPhone and HTC One compromise on for design.

Read more