ZOMG, it’s happening! Google Play edition HTC One owners should be on the lookout for an over-the-air update to Android 4.4 KitKat. The update weighs in at 320MB and according to Android Central, is arriving automatically on some handsets already.
Following revelations that almost all Android handset and tablet manufacturers cheat in benchmark tests, detecting the benchmark software and ramping up performance for the duration of the test, GameBench thinks it’s come up with an approach which is impossible to cheat.
Engadget reports that the company – whose co-founders both worked for chipmakers – take a different approach, running real games and using a background app to take systems measurements while those games are running …
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[tweet https://twitter.com/fakeninjitsu/statuses/403014466767691776]
Thanks to a tipster tweet, the boys at Android Central are reporting Android 4.4 KitKat is now en route to Nexus 4 smartphones. The update weighs in at a manageable 238MB and will of course add all the candy-tasting goodness Android 4.4 brings to the Android world.
HTC’s trend of Android update transparency continued yesterday with hints that Android 4.4 KitKat will arrive stateside on the HTC One before the end of January. In response to a customer inquiry, HTC’s @htcusa account responded “In North America, we plan to deliver Kit Kat (including Sense 5.5) to HTC One customers by the end of January.”
As Verizon unveiled their shiny new concept store at Mall of America today, the company “accidentally” leaked the upcoming pricing of the HTC One Max. According to Nick Gray at HTC Source who was in attendance at the event, the image was displayed on a “massive interactive touch-screen” that featured both the device and the price.
Our expectations are always tempered when it comes to the wireless carriers and Black Friday specials as its been a long, long time since I can remember a deal that made my jaw drop. With that in mind, Verizon Wireless’ 2013 Black Friday ad has hit the airwaves thanks to BlackFriday.com but it won’t knock your socks off. Thankfully, it will help those of you looking to pick up a DROID RAZR HD for free or a Motorola DROID Ultra for $99 with a two-year agreement.
For all the things the Moto G may be, there’s little question that the Moto G isn’t the phone for the individual who cares most about smartphone photography. With a $179 price tag, we understand some compromises will have to be made and even if a 5 megapixel camera, f/2.4 lens and flash combination are present, we know some tradeoffs are at hand in overall quality.
Good news all you HTC One Google Play edition owners as the manufacturer just tweeted that KitKat code has been delivered to Google. HTC states the timing of the pushed update via the PlayStore will be determined by Google and with no timeline history to rely on, we’re left guessing how long it take before el Google will push it out.
Although no official launch date has been given for HTC’s new phablet, a Best Buy webpage suggests the HTC One Max will be available on Friday. It is priced at $249 with a two-year contract, and is available now for pre-order.
The device was officially announced a month ago, though we had a pretty good idea what to expect as long ago as July …
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Ah yes, winter is in the air and along with it the promise of Black Friday shopping deals. I’ll just get right to it and say if you’re in the market for a Galaxy S 4…you should hold off and take a look at the Walmart and Target deals coming up in a little under two weeks.
Even as HTC promises that next-year will see the return of lower cost handsets in an attempt to boost their fledgling business, the flagship successor to the One is also on the horizon. A tweet by @evleaks teases the HTC M8 for AT&T “unsurprisingly destined for AT&T, among others.” In a response to a secondary inquiry about a potential Verizon offering, the Twitter tipster responds that all four carriers should see a release by the end of the first quarter next year. Considering that all four national carriers carry the HTC One right now, it’s not inconceivable to think that the same will happen for its successor.
The photographic qualities leave a lot to be desired, but if the Chinese forum Baidu is to be believed, this is the casing for HTC’s successor to the HTC One, codenamed the M8 (the HTC One was codenamed M7).
The hole above the camera is believed to be for a fingerprint sensor, already found in the HTC One Max. The rumor mill says the specs will be a Snapdragon 800 CPU with 3GB of RAM. Generally-reliable source @evleaks says it will be the first handset to run Sense 6.0 …
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sONcojECWXs&list=PLWz5rJ2EKKc-2quE-o0enpILZF3nBZg_K&index=1]
Update: Google has released a full list of what’s new in Android 4.4 KitKat. We’re digging in and we’ll bring you more details as we discover them.
Alongside the official release of its new flagship Nexus 5 on Google Play today, Google is also of course officially taking the wraps of 4.4 KitKat, the latest version of Android that will ship on the new Nexus 5. When will you be able to get your hands on the new OS? Google said KitKat 4.4 updates will arrive for the Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and the Galaxy S4 and HTC One Google Play Editions in the coming weeks.
Google confirmed that the update will not be coming to the Galaxy Nexus. Since it’s two years old, it now “falls outside of the 18-month update window when Google and others traditionally update devices.”
In the YouTub playlist above, Google walks through some of the new features of KitKat for developers and also highlights a number of user-facing features such as a new “immersive mode” that allows users to automatically hide onscreen controls for a truly full-screen experience. In a blog post, Google took sometime to explain the performance improvements it’s made in KitKat, noting that Android can now “run comfortably on the 512MB of RAM devices”:
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Advertising Age reports on a clever mobile ad campaign by LG, in which browser identifiers are used to display an ad targeted directly at the handset being used.
To promote the brand’s G2 smartphone, [ad agency M&C Saatchi] created a series of banners that recognized — and responded snarkily — to the competitor phones on which they appeared.
In the example above, the ad seen by owners of the Samsung Galaxy S4 promotes the faster processor speed of the LG G2. See the HTC and Apple versions below …
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HTC’s take on Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 – the HTC One Max – has finally been officially announced by HTC after long-running rumors.
HTC, a global leader in mobile innovation and design, today announced the HTC One max, a super-sized smartphone that brings the award-winning design, functionality and performance of the HTC One to fans of larger handsets. A new Fingerprint Scan feature takes convenience to a new level while acclaimed features including HTC BlinkFeed™, HTC Zoe™ and HTC BoomSound™, combined with the new HTC Sense 5.5, which are all enhanced to continue to deliver the best overall smartphone experience, now on a larger screen.
Most of the specs are as per the rumors we’ve reported over the last few months, including the almost non-existent bezel, 5.9″ full HD1080p display, 3300mAH battery, (optional) capacitive stylus and fingerprint scanner. The fingerprint sensor unlocks the phone, of course, but also has a neat feature where you can assign a different app to each finger, switching on the device with that app loaded.
The CPU is, however, less powerful than rumored. Everyone had been expecting a Snapdragon 800 processor running at 2.3GHz, but instead the Max has the same 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 chip as the phone on which it’s based, the HTC One …
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When a story earlier this week discovered Samsung was artificially inflating benchmark scores for its new Galaxy Note 3, many were quick to point out it wasn’t the first time Samsung had been caught engaged in such a practice. The same issue was discovered by AnandTech for the Galaxy S4 back in July, and today the site has an extensive report showing that almost every Android smartphone manufacturer is shipping devices that do the same.
As pictured in the chart above, that includes the HTC One, HTC One mini, LG G2, Galaxy Tab 10.1, and many others. In fact, the only companies that appear to not be using the method is Apple and Motorola, as well as Google with its Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices:
We started piecing this data together back in July, and even had conversations with both silicon vendors and OEMs about getting it to stop. With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly CPU optimization. It’s possible that older Motorola devices might’ve done the same thing, but none of the newer devices we have on hand exhibited the behavior. It’s a systemic problem that seems to have surfaced over the last two years, and one that extends far beyond Samsung… None of the Nexus do, which is understandable since the optimization isn’t a part of AOSP. This also helps explain why the Nexus 4 performed so slowly when we reviewed it – this mess was going on back then and Google didn’t partake.
As noted in the report, the gains that OEMs are experiencing from the inflated scores are probably not worth the press they’ve been receiving. AnandTech points out that most of the inflated scores provide under a 10% increase in GPU and CPU performance benchmarks:
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After making the decision to halt the Android 4.2 rollout to One variants, HTC America president Jason Mackenzie has just announced on Twitter that the company plans to update the One developer edition to Android 4.3 this week. The update will include the latest version of Sense, as well. Mackenzie also notes that One owners in Canada should expect the update by the end of the month.
Good news – the latest Sense experience & Android 4.3 will push to One Dev Edition owners this week & One customers in Canada by month end.
— Jason Mackenzie (@JasonBMac24) September 23, 2013
There’s no word on when the carrier models here in the United States will get the Android 4.3 update. Once HTC finalizes the build for each model, it must send it to every carrier for final improvements and tweaks, and as we all know, carriers certainly don’t expedite the update process at all.
If you own an HTC One developer edition or Canadian variant, be sure to keep an eye out for the update and let us know when you receive it.
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With the gold iPhone 5s a very poorly-kept secret, it’s no surprise to see other brands getting in on the action. Engadget has received photos from a previously-reliable source (Sina Weibo, who leaked the blue model) of a gold-colored HTC One.
HTC could use a bit of a boost after a series of unhappy experiences.
It’s always next to impossible to judge the shade of a color from a photo, as angle and lighting can dramatically change the appearance, so we’ll have to wait to see whether this is something close to Apple’s champagne color or something more gaudy.
While many supposed parts leaks are fake, this one looks credible, and we suspect it won’t be the last gold smartphone we’ll see by the end of the year.
The latest Roku for Android app allows video as well as audio and photos to be streamed to a Roku set-top box – but only for a limited number of devices.
Play your video from select Android devices to your Roku player. Supported models include: Samsung Galaxy SIII, Samsung Galaxy S4, Nexus 4, HTC One, and Nexus 7 (2012 model). Video playback requires Android 4.0 or later …
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Just as rumors suggested, Best Buy will begin to offer the HTC One in a Metallic Blue flavor beginning September 15th. While the retail giant doesn’t specifically confirm which carrier variants it will offer the blue model in, it simply teases that it will be available “with the option of 4G LTE service from AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon.” Last month, a leaked document suggested that the blue HTC One would be available from Sprint, while we saw leaked images of the Verizon model.
The award-winning HTC One will be available in a stunning new Metallic Blue exclusively through Best Buy in the United States with the option of 4G LTE service from AT&T, Sprint or Verizon at the more than 1,400 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores as well as on BestBuy.comon Sunday, Sept. 15.
HTC’s former VP of Product Design Thomas Chien (photo: HTC blog)
Taiwanese company HTC has not been having a happy time of late. Senior departures, including its COO; a halving of market share since 2011; former UK execs setting up a rival company; disappointing Q2 financials; and the possibility of the first ever loss in the company’s history in Q3.
But the latest saga in the company’s troubles read more like the plot of a soap opera than real-life. First, several of HTC’s former lead designers were arrested last week on suspicion of fraudulent expenses claims and leaking of trade secrets. Now Engadget reports that one of those arrested, ex-VP of Product Design Thomas Chien, may have been involved in a conspiracy with a Chinese municipal government to use both the trade secrets are purloined cash to create a rival smartphone company in China …
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Just as it announced last week, the HTC One is now finally available from Verizon Wireless for $199.99 with a new two-year agreement. The device is being sold only in a 32GB capacity and in a silver color option. It ships with Android 4.2.2, and as you would expect, comes with Sense 5 loaded on top. Unique to the Verizon model, however, are the 4G LTE and Verizon logos plastered on the back.
The specs are the same as the AT&T variant, which launched a staggering four months ago. The HTC One is powered by a Snapdragon 600 processor paired with 2GB of RAM, which even four months later, are pretty solid specifications.
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We’ve been hearing more and more rumors about the ‘HTC One Max’, a variant of the company’s flagship HTC One that will sit on the high end of the family with a 5.9-inch display and compete in the oversized smartphone market with Samsung’s Galaxy Mega and others. While it sports the same overall design of the HTC One, new images of the device’s backside show some unique hardware features. ePrice today posted the image above that shows the HTC One Max next to the HTC One and HTC Mini. Curiously, the HTC One Max appears to have an extra sensor underneath the rear camera. The report claims it’s a fingerprint sensor, but there’s always a possibility it could be an IR blaster or a different sensor. The image also appears to show what looks like a pin connector on the lower right corner that could allow for wireless dock charging.
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https://twitter.com/VZWnews/statuses/368366543379247104
Verizon has finally announced a release date for the HTC One via its official Twitter account today. The device will become available on August 22 and will sell for $199 on the usual two year contract. There’s no word yet on an announcement for the new Moto X, but perhaps we’ll get confirmation before the release of the HTC One for those trying to decide between the two devices. AT&T confirmed this morning that the Moto X would arrive on August 23.
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