announcement Stories January 12, 2016
Mobile World Congress is still more than a month away, but that’s not keeping LG from sending out invitations to its upcoming press event in Barcelona. The company’s keynote is scheduled for February 21st, according to the invite, at 14:00 local time. Beyond that, though, there’s not much to learn here. The invite shows what looks to be a jack-in-the-box along with the slogan “Play begins.”… expand full story
announcement Stories November 11, 2015
According to Steve Jurvetson, venture capitalist and board member at pioneer quantum computing company D-WAVE (as well as others, such as Tesla and SpaceX), Google has what may be a “watershed” quantum computing announcement scheduled for early next month. This comes as D-WAVE, which notably also holds the Mountain View company as a customer, has just sold a 1000+ Qubit 2X quantum computer to national security research institution Los Alamos… expand full story
announcement Stories October 27, 2015
Verizon and Motorola have today announced both the Droid Turbo 2 and the Droid Maxx 2, a pair of smartphones that give Verizon customers some really great flagship and sub-flagship options. The big announcement here is the shatterproof screen coming exclusively to the higher-end Droid Turbo 2, but that reveal is coupled with the announcement of a mid-range, all-around good phone, the Maxx 2. Here’s everything we know… expand full story
announcement Stories September 29, 2015
Google’s planning to introduce new Chromecasts, new Nexus devices, and plenty of other goodies at its September 29th event today, and thankfully, the company is livestreaming it for those who won’t be there in the flesh. If you’ve got a chance to watch along (although there probably isn’t much we don’t already know), head below the break… expand full story
announcement Stories September 25, 2015
After many months of leaks, BlackBerry has finally made the Android-powered “Venice” slider smartphone official. The phone is officially coming to market as the Priv (as was leaked yesterday), a suitable name considering its privacy and security focus, and it’s going to be available later this year… expand full story
announcement Stories September 2, 2015
PSA: Popular iOS game Alto’s Adventure is coming to Android
Alto’s Adventure is one of those fad games that may or may not stick around in the long term, but it has been featured in the App Store a couple of times for good reason. It’s a tranquil and calm pick-up-and-play snowboarding game not all too different than the likes of Tiny Wings, but — just like Tiny Wings — it’s very addicting. Now, thanks to an announcement from NoodleCake (the game’s maker), we know that Alto’s Adventure is coming to Android.
We don’t yet know exactly when the game is making its way to Google’s mobile platform. “We are hoping to have the game out soon enough but we don’t have an exact launch date just yet,” the developers said in a blog post. Assumably, NoodleCake will also be pushing the device to the Amazon Appstore, as the company says that it is coming to Kindle Fire as well. We’ll keep you in the loop. As a fan of the game myself, I’m excited.
announcement Stories August 12, 2015
Motorola says the new Moto X Pure Edition will be available September 3rd
The 3rd generation Moto X, also known as Moto X Style, also known as (officially, in the United States) Moto X Pure Edition, is set to become available for purchase in the US on September 3rd.
The phone, announced a couple of weeks ago alongside the Moto X Play, packs a 5.7-inch Quad HD display, a Snapdragon 808, 3 GB of RAM, 4G LTE, a beastly 21-megapixel main camera, a 5-megapixel front cam, and a 3,000 mAh battery.
Moto X Style, known as the “Pure Edition” stateside, will cost $399 for the base model. The Moto X Play will be available in 55 countries starting August (but, unfortunately, this doesn’t include the United States).
announcement Stories July 28, 2015
Motorola has officially unveiled the Moto X Style, its top-of-the-line offering for those looking for a good-looking powerhouse. The company also unveiled a second Moto X called the Moto X Play, which is more rugged and offers better battery, but is less powerful in terms of tech specs. expand full story
announcement Stories June 22, 2015
Google has this morning announced a new effort called News Lab, which is the company’s attempt at using its many resources and technologies to help usher in a new age of innovation in journalism. There are three basic tentpoles to what the company is doing here to empower journalists: tools, data, and programs. expand full story
announcement Stories June 1, 2015
More than a year ago, Google became one of the first tech companies to share data on the diversity of its workforce, and now it has released an updated version of the data. In a post on Google+, the company revealed some of the changes that it has made to improve diversity and the results of those changes. Last month, Google revealed plans to spend more than $150 million on diversity initiatives over the next year.
announcement Stories May 6, 2015
Sony has today announced a refresh of its Xperia C line with the introduction of the Xperia C4, featuring a Full HD display and a “best in class” 5-megapixel front camera. I’m not the target audience for a selfie phone, but there’s definitely some kind of target audience out there somewhere that buys these things…
announcement Stories April 15, 2015
Ditching the Ascend name, Huawei has today announced its P8 flagship smartphone, most notably packing a steel metal construction and some nifty new camera features built around a 13-megapixel main shooter with optical image stabilization. Of course the software on the device got a bump into 2015 as well, bringing on board Google’s Android Lollipop (or at least Huawei’s version of it). expand full story
announcement Stories April 1, 2015
Acer has today announced the latest addition to Google’s Chrome OS lineup with a new Chromebase all-in-one desktop with a touch screen. The announcement comes following the company’s introduction of the very first 15-inch Chromebook earlier this year, which like this device, was first of its kind.
The company has also sent invites to an event taking place at the World Trade Center on April 23rd… expand full story
announcement Stories March 18, 2015
HTC reveals One M9 to be available in the US from April 10, more details
HTC has announced today during its Uh Oh protection plan livestream that the HTC One M9 will be available at retail from early April in the United States. The answer came in reference to when the Uh Oh plan itself will be launching, which will be the same day that the HTC One M9 hits stores. Notably, this date will likely vary by carrier, but the first availability of the device will be April 10th.
The company also answered several other questions via viewers on Twitter:
The Uh Oh protection plan was “born out of a conference room in the US offices,” and HTC Americas president Jason Mackenzie says that it will indeed be limited to the United States for the time being. The Uh Oh plan will likely make it to other countries with time, however, after the company makes sure to “get it right.”
When asked about the Lollipop update for the HTC One M8 and M7, Mackenzie said that the update is “in certification” now, and that approval should be happening sometime around the end of this month or the beginning of next month.
Finally, HTC confirmed today, unsurprisingly, that there will not be a Google Play Edition for the HTC One M9. When asked about a Windows Phone version, Mackenzie left things open ended saying to “stay tuned.”
You can watch the stream in full if you’re interested.
announcement Stories March 17, 2015
President of HTC America Jason Mackenzie told us yesterday that HTC has a big HTC One M9-related announcement scheduled for Wednesday, and today the HTCAmericas YouTube account has uploaded a countdown and stream for the event—coming to us live from Seattle in about 24 hours.
announcement Stories March 16, 2015
‘Big’ HTC One M9 announcement coming on Wednesday
Jason Mackenzie, the President of HTC America, has come out this morning on Twitter to say that the Taiwanese company has a “BIG announcement for US customers on Wednesday.”
It’s going to be aimed specifically at “US customers,” which makes me think the announcement will likely be stateside availability of the HTC One M9. I’m not sure if that would qualify as a “BIG” announcement in my mind, but we’ve definitely been waiting a while to find out when the device is going to be available.
Another plausible announcement could be an “HTC One M9 for Windows” device, a successor to the Microsoft-approved device that HTC launched in August of last year. That would be closer to something “BIG”, but I think HTC has an Android HTC One M9 that it needs to convince the world to buy before it can sell another variant of it.
announcement Stories February 25, 2015
Google today has announced that it is introducing a way to automatically convert Adobe Flash-based ads to HTML5. Google says that eligible Flash ad campaigns, both existing and new, will automatically be converted to HTML5 when uploaded through AdWords, AdWords Editor, and a variety of third-party tools.
announcement Stories January 29, 2015
OnePlus is today teasing an announcement for tomorrow with the tagline “Back to Basics,” but no one really has any idea what the company plans to tell us about. Interestingly, the teaser image that OnePlus posted across its social media profiles (seen above) definitely makes reference to the Breaking Bad title screen, but it’s not clear yet what it might mean.
Also, updated models of the OnePlus One without Cyanogen branding on their back covers have begun shipping…
announcement Stories January 22, 2015
The upcoming HTC flagship is probably one of the most exciting smartphone launches scheduled for the next couple of months, and today Phandroid has shared photos that claim to show the rumored “Hima” device in the flesh. There’s nothing crazy or exciting to see here, but we do now have a bit of corroboration of things we knew previously.
announcement Stories May 13, 2014
LG has just published a new teaser video for its upcoming G3 smartphone. The video doesn’t reveal much, but it definitely proves that most of the leaks we’ve seen recently were accurate.
According to this epic new video, the LG G3 looks incredibly thin and appears to have a brushed metal design (also leaked in gold), but we won’t know for sure until LG’s announcement. The video teases the G3’s optical image stabilization, referenced only by a moving camera sensor, and concludes with a tag line that reads, “Simple is the new smart” and the official announcement date of May 27th, 2014. Unfortunately, there’s not much else to see here, but the video does provide a look at the smartphone’s thin profile.
announcement Stories November 12, 2013
There has been much talk of Motorola’s upcoming Moto G smartphone in recent weeks, the rumored “mini” follow up to its Moto X flagship launched earlier this year. After making a brief appearance on Motorola’s website, the company started teasing a November 13th live online announcement for the device, and now we get what look to be official specs from a German retailer already listing the Moto G.
The Phone House, a german retailer, today quickly posted and then removed a listing for the Moto G that was caught by The Unwired. On top of listing what we assume are official specs (below), it also quoted a price of £149 (approximately $235 US). That seems a little pricey to be the on-contract price for what many assume will be a budget version of the Moto X, so it could very well be the off-contract price, which compares to the $499 Motorola and carriers charge for the Moto X without a two-year contract. The Moto X currently sells for $99 on contract.
Head below for the full list of Moto G specs:
announcement Stories July 12, 2013
Rovio teases July 15th announcement for brand new Angry Birds Star Wars game
Last November, Rovio introduced a new Angry Birds Star Wars game that brought iconic Star Wars locations and characters from the movies into the Angry Birds gameplay universe. Today the developer is teasing what looks to be an entirely new Star Wars themed Angry Birds game. While Rovio’s initial tweet only mentioned a “Big new game announcement” coming this Monday, it later confirmed on its blog that the announcement will be for “a brand new game” with “the biggest character line-up ever, awesome new powers, and maybe even a few surprises!”
On top of the teaser, Rovio is also making Angry Birds Star Wars available for free today for a limited time.
We don’t get any other details, but Rovio did include the image above hinting the game might be inspired by Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace:
announcement Stories April 29, 2013
Samsung has finally made things official for the Galaxy Tab 3 today, announcing in a press release on its website that the 7-inch tablet will become available globally starting next month. Samsung didn’t confirm pricing on the new tab, but did reveal specs including a 1.2GHz dual for process, 7 inch WSVGA (1024 x 600, 169 PPI) TFT display, 1GB of RAM, and 8 and 16GB variants expandable to 64GB via microSD.
The new Galaxy Tab 3 will be running Android 4.1 out of the box, but Samsung will only be shipping the Wi-Fi version of the device when it begins selling next month.
Other specs include a 4,000 mAh Li-ion battery, 3-megapixel main camera, 1.3 -megapixel front facing cam, A-GPS ＋ GLONASS, WiFi Direct, and Bluetooth 3.0. Rather underwhelming specs, so we assume pricing will be on the low end of things when Samsung finally decides to fill us in.
As for those waiting out for a WiFi + 3G variant, the company currently plans on beginning sales of that model in June with rollouts happening gradually and availability varying by market.
announcement Stories February 20, 2013
As the PS4 keynote event unfolds, a new great feature has just been announced: Android tablets as game controllers. The specific reveal came along with the game Drive Club. It’s a first-person team-based racing game exclusive to the new PS4. EvolutionStudios, the brains behind the new game, are allowing users to create a game and challenge their friends with Android tablets while on the go. More information as to whether this feature is exclusive to this game or a new PS4 feature has yet to be announced, but we’ll be sure to update you as we get word.
Update: Well that’s all folks! The PS4 “reveal” event is over now (with no hardware sighting), and Drive Club is the only game with Android tablets as confirmed second controllers. As more games are announced and eventually released, we’ll probably see this feature included. But, for now, Drive Club is the only known game.
announcement Stories November 16, 2012
AT&T’s LTE to blanket 103 markets, with 24 new markets announced this week
AT&T just revealed its 4G LTE now blankets over 150 million people across the United States, more than doubling where it stood at the end of 2011 in terms of people covered, and now it plans to push full steam ahead by expanding to 103 markets total, with more expected by the end of 2012.
The carrier further noted its 4G LTE coverage is “part of the nation’s largest 4G network” that services 3,000 more 4G areas than Verizon currently does (although much of that is slower HSPA 4G).
Moreover, as AT&T’s 4G LTE coverage continues to widen, customers can access 4G speeds “outside of 4G LTE areas on the nation’s largest 4G network, unlike competitors, whose smartphone customers fall back to slower 3G technologies when outside of LTE coverage.”
4G LTE expansions announced today:
Today’s expansion notice comes just two days after the carrier also announced its 4G LTE network would light up in Daytona Beach, Fla. Denver, Colo., Louisville, K.Y., Milwaukee, Wis., Provo-Orem, Utah, Tacoma, Wash., York, Pa., and Washington D.C.
This article is cross-posted on 9to5Mac.
Get the full press release below.
announcement Stories November 3, 2011
HTC and Verizon have just announced the rumored HTC Rezound (formerly Vigor) at their event in New York City. The HTC Rezound is available on Verizon for $299 with two year contract, featuring Android 2.3, Verizon LTE, a 720P 4.3-inch display, 1.5-GHz processor, and 1GB of RAM. You can notice the Beats Audio branding on the back of the device, in which headphones are includes. This device is sure to go head-to-head with Samsung’s Nexus Prime. Sadly, the Rezound won’t get Ice Cream Sandwich until early Q1 of 2012.
The HTC Rezound will be available at Best Buy and Verizon for $299 on November 14th.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CCZuMH5mYs”]
We’ll have a hands-on of the device when the event ends in just a few minutes. In the mean time, check out the press shots of the device after the break:
announcement Stories August 29, 2011
It looks like Samsung isn’t the only one set on launching an Android-powered tablet at this year’s IFA. According to a translation of a Notebook Italia story, Toshiba is planning on introducing a refreshed version of their 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet known as ‘Thrive’.
As you can see from the image above, the new refreshed Thrive is expected to be super thin upgrade that will more than likely do away with the full-size USB port, SD card slot, and HDMI (opting for mini USB, HDMI, and micro SD ports). The translation also notes the device is “dominated by the screen edge to edge and brushed-metal finish on the cover. The tablet is completely surrounded by a chrome frame crossed by a central groove.”
Toshiba’s Thrive tablet launched to less than stellar reviews after having gone up for U.S. pre-orders in June. The Thrive’s specs weren’t the issue (it currently packs a Tegra 2 chipset, 1 GB DDR2 RAM, 5MP back and 2MP front camera, and ranges from 8GB to 32 GB in storage). The real problem is the Thrive chunky design (0.66 inches thick) which has been described as “huge” and “bulky”. The current Thrive line up weighs in at 1.6 pounds (comparable to the first-gen iPad which has been considerably slimmed down for the iPad 2). expand full story
announcement Stories August 24, 2011
Google will have to pony up $500 million in charges related to ads shown from online pharmacies that “operate outside the law”, according to a report from NYTimes citing sources “briefed on the investigation”.
The charges relate to an investigation launched in May which accused Google of displaying ads from illegally operated online pharmacies who allegedly sell “counterfeit drugs” or fail to “require a prescription”. While site owners are liable for the ads they display on their websites, Google is obviously being held somewhat accountable.
This isn’t Google’s first run in with shady online pharmacies. The company took to their official blog last year voice their frustrations calling the process of regulating online pharmacies an “ongoing, escalating cat-and-mouse game”.
The post explained: expand full story
announcement Stories August 23, 2011
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUinl4Wclr4&feature=player_embedded]
Samsung already told us “something big is coming” on September 1st during this year’s IFA in an announcement accompanied by two extremely vague teaser videos. While we’re still unsure which of the many rumoured devices will be unveiled, the teaser vid above released by the company today indicates their upcoming August 29 announcement in New York will be focused on bringing the Samsung Galaxy S II to US carriers.
We’re not exactly impressed with the creativity in the ad/teaser vid, but at least it isn’t the typical iPhone/Apple commercial knock off. There are many that hope the September 1st announcement would bring that mysterious Ice Cream Sandwich-powered, 4.65-inch (hybrid tablet/phone?) “GT-I9250” device we’ve heard about. There is definitely still a possibility Samsung will take time to unveil new products other than the Galaxy S II at IFA, we’re hoping to get a sneak peek at a new tablet (perhaps a 7-inch Galaxy tab refresh). We’ll be on hand on August 29 for the New York event as well as during IFA to bring you the latest updates. expand full story
announcement Stories August 17, 2011
If you haven’t heard by now, Google has shocked many this week with their acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, which still may have to pass regulatory review for GOOG to avoid an unusually high $2.5b reverse termination fee. However, while there might be a few hoping the deal falls through, Microsoft is taking this time to convince smartphone makers the Windows Phone platform is the only “truly open mobile ecosystem”.
President of Windows Phone division, Andy Lees, provided the following statement (via WinSuperSite) following the Google/Motorola acquisition announcement:
“Investing in a broad and truly open mobile ecosystem is important for the industry and consumers alike, and Windows Phone is now the only platform that does so with equal opportunity for all partners..”
This comes after Microsoft announced a deal with Nokia in February that would see Windows Phone 7 become Nokia’s primary OS for smartphones (a deal that appears to give Nokia an unfair advantage over other partners). As a result, Nokia will be working closely with Microsoft and integrating a ton of their own content into the OS including their content and application store, and the Nokia Maps app. The handsets will also receive the Xbox Live, Zune music store, and Bing search treatment from Microsoft.
While the deal isn’t exclusive (allowing Microsoft to partner with other manufacturers and Nokia to make devices powered by another OS), it certainly gives the two companies an unfair advantage over other OEMs considering the Windows Phone platform… and seems to contradict Lees’ statement of the OS being an “equal opportunity for all partners”. Google’s acquisition of Motorola may have a bigger impact down the line depending on their plans for the company… but for the time being the Google/Motorola partnership doesn’t provide any less incentive for new Android partners than the Microsoft/Nokia deal does for potential Windows Phone manufacturers. expand full story
