IPhone

Reuters last month reported that Google has been bolstering its self-driving car team as of late, and now as April rolls in, we’ve uncovered some more information on new hires as the team continues to expand. In one case, Google has added an ex-Apple global supply manager for the iPhone and the Apple Watch to the self-driving car supply management team…

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Yesterday morning, at a relatively low key event without much fanfare and following the almost ritual avalanche of leaked schematics and what have you, Apple officially announced the iPhone SE. With a chassis virtually identical to that of the iPhone 5s – and 5 before it, for that matter – the smaller-sized iPhone came back in all of its four-inch glory, and not without raising eyebrows.

According to the company’s claims, however, about thirty million people bought a 4-inch iPhone last year, amounting to almost 8% of all Apple phones sold. Considering the massive marketing push made to advertise the four bigger-screened iPhones introduced in the past couple of years, that certainly is no small feat, indicating that there indeed still is interest for smaller devices, a market the Cupertino giant would be naive to ignore.

Sure, the much more variegated Android landscape has offered a few notable options in years past, but those were either afterthoughts, less powerful ‘mini’ versions of established flagships, or devices explicitly designed to be sub-par when compared to their siblings. The iPhone SE may lack 3D Touch and newer-generation Touch ID, but the rest of the package is clearly inspired by the iPhone 6s’ spec-sheet, and nothing says that this smaller sibling isn’t here to stay.

And that begs the question of how this is going to impact the Android landscape. Are Android manufacturers going to follow suit the coming years, or instead pray for the SE to be a one hit wonder (or a complete dud) – and thus something less to worry about?

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Eric Schmidt is in South Korea this week to witness Google’s AlphaGo AI system completely destroy the world Go champion at his own game. Sedol lost the first game yesterday, saying then that he was “very surprised”. Today he lost again. “It was a clear loss on my part,” he said. He had predicted before the matchups began that he would win the five-game series 5-0 or 4-1 “at worst.”

But while the Alphabet Executive Chairman is in South Korea to witness the monumental battle, the Korean press (OSEN, in this case) is clearly focusing on something else. As you can see in the pictures below, Schmidt was caught at a press event this week taking pictures with an iPhone…

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So, you’ve managed to get early delivery of a shiny new Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, what’s the first thing you do with it? Try your best to destroy it is the answer from a couple of YouTubers out there.

JerryRigEverything put the device through scratch, burn and bend tests, while EverythingApplePro pitched the smartphone against Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus to see how it fared when submerged in water and dropped on the ground …

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Facebook has today announced that it is bringing its Periscope-like live video broadcast feature to Android. The service received its debut on iPhones last month.

Facebook Live enables you to share your experiences and perspectives in real time, with the people who matter to you – whether you’re someone who wants to broadcast to friends and family, or a public figure who wants to connect with fans around the world. Live videos on Facebook are authentic and exciting, and we’re seeing people tuning in and engaging directly with broadcasters in the moment. 

The company says that people spend more than three times longer watching a video when it is live …

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Coca-Cola could easily equip just about everyone in the country with a free Google Cardboard-style VR viewer if the above experiment turns into reality.

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Following Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s vague series of tweets yesterday, Hiroshi Lockheimer, senior vice president of Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast, has come out and offered his own opinion on Apple’s battle with the government on national security versus user privacy. Earlier this week, a U.S. judge ruled that Apple must help the FBI obtain data from a passcode-locked iPhone 5c used by one of the gunmen in the fatal San Bernardino shooting. Apple CEO Tim Cook then responded by posting an open letter on Apple’s homepage saying that Apple would not comply with the court’s request.

Although Lockheimer’s responses are just as vague as Pichai’s, he does seem to agree with Cook and Apple…

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Update: A new hands-on video shows the $4 iPhone clone in all its glory (embedded below).

We told you earlier today about the insane $4 Freedom 251 phone, and now at least one publication has managed to get their hands on the device. Initial impressions aren’t great, and it looks like this phone — unsurprisingly — is just a mess of copyright infringement. Not unlike many other low-end offerings from dozens of overseas manufacturers, the phone pulls a lot of “inspiration” from the Cupertino company’s smashing successes…

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According to the latest U.S. smartphone market share numbers from Parks Associates, Apple is still well in the lead compared to competing manufacturers, holding a beefy 40% of the smartphone market. But the latest figures also show that Android OEMs are gaining ground on the dominant Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker. Now, Samsung holds around 31% of the market and LG is next in line with 10%…

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This is one of the best deals yet on our favorite all-in-one home security system and air quality detector.

Just in time for the holidays, get $20 off Canary. That brings the price down to $179 from the regular $199. Better yet, you can save a total of $50 off regular price when purchasing the Canary Two-Pack.

This Wi-Fi, smartphone connected security system does a whole lot more than the webcam style security cameras gaining popularity recently, and it does it all with gorgeous industrial design and slick companion apps for Android and other mobile devices…
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I’ve been an iOS user since day one — back when it was called “iPhone OS” — and haven’t had any reason to leave Apple’s camp. Each day, I use iOS devices and apps, and for the most part, they “just work.” You could offer me a cheap Android phone or tablet and I wouldn’t have much use for it.

Or so I thought. Just in time for the holidays, 9to5’s publisher Seth Weintraub sent me an unexpected gift: a $99 Motorola Moto G (2nd Gen), also available on Amazon. That price isn’t a typo — for under $100 (half the price of the recently released sixth-generation iPod touch), Motorola is selling a full-fledged smartphone with a larger, higher-resolution screen than the $199 iPod, and for that matter the old iPhone 5c I decided to replace it with. You’ve probably heard that Amazon is trying a similar tactic with its $49 7″ Fire Tablets, which so radically undercut the price of Apple’s iPads that you can buy five for the same price as an entry-level iPad mini 2… and still have change left over. Since these products were developed by well-established companies, they’re budget-priced, but not junk.

I wanted to see whether the Moto G would have any value in my life, and how it would stack up against lower-end iOS devices. What I found was exactly the reason Apple leads the cellular industry in profits yet continues to lag behind Android in market share: the Moto G offers a more than “good enough” alternative at a price that anyone can afford. From my perspective, the existence of a good $99 smartphone is precisely the reason the iPod family has all but disappeared, and why even iPad mini pricing is arguably unsustainable…

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Update: Just like the multiple account support that disappeared mere hours after it appeared, this awesome 3D Touch feature is now gone.

Instagram for iOS has had 3D Touch features for quite a while, but it looks like the Instagram team wanted to experiment with bringing some of these to Android as well. While the latest version for Android obviously doesn’t take advantage of force sensitive hardware (which doesn’t really exist of this side of the mobile space anyway), it does add a nifty new pop up for quickly liking, commenting, and sharing posts…

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Yahoo Messenger has long taken a back seat to other Yahoo products on mobile devices, but today the company is finally unveiling a revamped app that brings its messaging platform into this decade with a completely redesigned user experience and new features.
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If you’ve ever felt like Facebook didn’t put quite as much focus on its Android app as on the iPhone one, that’s something that should be changing soon. Facebook’s chief product officer Chris Cox is insisting that an unspecified but substantial number of staff switch from iPhone to Android, in order to have an experience of the service more typical of the majority of users, reports Wired.

“I am mandating a switch of a whole bunch of my team over to Android, just because people, when left up to their own devices, will often prefer an iPhone,” said Chris Cox, who said the move is “so that they can be reporting bugs and living in the same experience that most Facebook users experience today” … 

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