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Samsung Galaxy S5 confirmed for April, new design, may have iris-scanner

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Galaxy S5 design needs to be different to the S4, says Samsung

Galaxy S5 design needs to be different to the S4, says Samsung

Samsung didn’t reveal much that was new in a fairly wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg, but exec VP of the company’s mobile division Lee Young Hee did tease a couple of things while confirming that the Galaxy S5 would be released by April.

The company is “studying the possibility” of including the iris-recognition security system we told you about last month. If Samsung succeeds, it would be a neat piece of one-upmanship on the Touch ID fingerprint scanner in Apple’s iPhone 5S, iris-recognition being both faster and more secure than fingerprints.

The company also said that it recognized that the design of the S4 wasn’t sufficiently different from the S3, and that we can expect something significantly different from the S5 … 
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Report: Google sidesteps any fault in Germany as prosecutors drop Street View probe

German prosecutors investigating the Street View Wi-Fi data-cropping scandal just announced they are no longer going after Google.

Bloomberg reported this morning that the public prosecutors office in Germany apparently could not find any criminal violations during its two-year-long probe into the Street View matter:

German prosecutors will drop a criminal probe into whether Google Inc. illegally gathered wireless-network data for its Street View mapping service, two people familiar with the issue said.

Prosecutors in the city of Hamburg didn’t find criminal violations, according to the people, who declined to be identified because the matter hasn’t formally ended.

Google’s Street View is a service highlighted in Google Maps and Google Earth that offers panoramic views of streets, but the global plotting venture ran into hot water when complaints surfaced in 2010 that it allegedly poached unencrypted Internet data from wireless networks for roughly three years.

A privacy complaint was subsequently filed in Germany in 2010, but Google has now reportedly sidestepped any fault in that particular country. It has, however, run into penalties across the world for its handling of inquiries.

The Federal Communications Commission, for instance, found the search engine did not break any laws, but it slapped the Mountain View, Calif.-based company with a $25,000 fine earlier this year for obstructing its investigation.

Get the full report at Bloomberg.


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Oakley talks smart eyewear, views Project Glass as an adversary

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Oakley could soon give Google’s Project Glass a run for its money.

The eyewear maker told Bloomberg that it is developing technology for integrating smartphone elements into its products. The science is only in the preliminary stage, however, as Oakley’s Chief Executive Officer Colin Baden (picture, left) would not even validate plans to launch such spectacles. He did explain his company’s stance on the project, though, while detailing how the public is yearning for a heads-up display:

“As an organization, we’ve been chasing this beast since 1997,” explained Baden. “Ultimately, everything happens through your eyes, and the closer we can bring it to your eyes, the quicker the consumer is going to adopt the platform.”

Colin then described a few features he would like to see in the product, such as voice-controlled display information in conjunction with a smartphone via Bluetooth. The company actually has a few patents in place that detail its vision (available here, and pictured above). Oakley’s augmented-reality glasses would obviously not be cheap for consumers— especially because its initial target audience consists of athletes and eventually the U.S. military:


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