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Carphone Warehouse, one of the largest retailers with over 1700 stores in Europe, is entering into a crucial partnership with Samsung, in which it will operate 60 new Samsung exclusive stores across Europe, as a "preferred partner". This is also an interesting development for Samsung, as this deal will massively improve the retail foot print in all the Android-loving parts of Europe. These new 60 stores will be Samsung exclusive experiences, with Carphone Warehouse contributing its part with retail experience and run Samsung's stores with what it calls "Carphone Warehouse's assisted sales tool and connectivity platform", all with Samsung tablets.
The new stores will be rolled out in the next three months across seven European markets: UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands. The stores will have a premium look and feel and will sell Samsung mobile communications products across Samsung's full range of mobiles, tablets, laptops and wearables.
As mentioned earlier, the Samsung exclusive Carphone Warehouse stores will sell all the available Samsung devices, including wearables, as they will feature a prominent role in the future. On the new experience offered -
Shoppers can expect an exciting new customer experience which merges retail and technology innovations such as Carphone Warehouse's ...
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Samsung, the world's biggest Android manufacturer, is reportedly toning down its TouchWiz UI tweaks and own custom apps due to pressure from Google, reports re/code. Not long before, the Korean Chaebol unveiled a range of new Android devices at the Consumer Electronics Show, all featuring the company's latest and heavily modified Touchwiz "Magazine" UX, that looked nothing like Android. And then we saw a couple more leaks of its adaptation for the mobile form factor, and even that was a drastic departure from the previous version of TouchWiz, let alone stock Android. This might have set Google off and reportedly, the two companies have come to a compromise(among many other things) in which Samsung will tone down its UI tweaks and replacement apps for Google's services, going forward.
The image above, taken from a Ars Technica opinion piece paints a clear picture of how Samsung had its own ecosystem around Android, replacing almost every little Google service possible. It is all set to change soon.
Multiple sources familiar with the companies’ thinking say the two technology giants began hammering out a series of broad agreements at CES that would bring Samsung’s view of Android in line with Google’s own. The results ...
Apple is reportedly pushing a new update, iOS 7.0.5, that will fix persistent software issues with the iPhone 5s and 5c being sold in China. There have been reports of problems around network provisioning for units of the iPhone 5s and 5c being sold in China and the update is expected to be a fix for that. The popular phones launched on the biggest operator in China, China Mobile, to much success and the numbers reflected in Apple's sales figures. Apple managed to push a record 51 million units of the iPhone in Q1 2014.
The iPhone 5s and 5c brought with them a major change to the interface and underlying capabilities via iOS 7. While the exact nature of the error is unknown, it is possible that the tweaks made to iOS 7 are partly responsible for the network provisioning error. The iOS 7.0.5 update weighs in at 35.4 megabytes and is available only for non-US models of the iPhone 5c and 5s. The update is available to all non-US devices including and is not restricted to devices in China.
[Via - 9to5 Mac]
Lenovo, the world's no. 1 PC maker and one of the top 5 Smartphone vendors in the world, is reportedly buying out Motorola's Mobility division from Google for close 3 billion USD, reports Reuters. With final talks between Lenovo and Google going on, Reuters adds that the Motorola mobility division is the one that makes the Moto X and the recently launched popular budget device, Moto G. Lenovo will also be getting its hands on certain patents as a part of the deal, reportedly. Google created a lot of flutter, not long ago, when it announced that it will acquire Motorola's mobility division for a whopping 12.5 billion USD. It was assumed that the money was for all the patents, but Motorola(under Google's leadership) announced the Moto X and the Moto G, with very few tweaks and modifications, which possibly signaled more Google intervention than ever, but it looks like that was not the case then, nor is it now.
Lenovo and Google have just made the acquisition official, read here for more details.
Lenovo will reportedly finance the deal with cash, stocks and deferred payments to Google. For Lenovo, which has been rumoured to be in talks of many high profile ...
Hot on the heels of the news that Google might be planning to offload Motorola to Lenovo comes the official announcement. Google today revealed that Lenovo plans to acquire the Motorola Mobility smartphone business for $2.91 billion. Google had acquired Motorola for a whopping 12.5 billion dollars which makes the sale price seem suspiciously low. That said, Google will retain control of Motorola Mobility's patent portfolio which seems to have been the intention all along. Lenovo will receive a license to get access to this patent portfolio. It remains unclear if this will be an exclusive license however, Lenovo will also receive over 2,000 patent assets as well as the brand and trademark portfolio for Motorola Mobility.
The breakdown for payments will be in the form of $660 million in cash, Lenovo shares worth $750 million. The remaining $1.5 billion will be paid over a course of three years. The move will work well to help Lenovo increase its foothold in the smartphone space and more so in the western markets.
“As part of Lenovo, Motorola Mobility will have a rapid path to achieving our goal of reaching the next 100 million people with the mobile Internet. With the recent launches of ...
Facebook released its financial results for Q4 2013 today and the numbers show a steady rise. The extremely popular social network posted revenues to the tune of $2.59 billion compared to $1.59 billion last year. This beat analyst predictions that were aiming at revenues of $2.33 billion.
Facebook Q4 2013 Earnings | Create infographics
The most important part of the report however was that mobile contributes to 53 percent of Facebook's advertising revenues. This also explains their continued foray into diversification on the mobile front. With over 945 million monthly active users from mobile alone, numbers look very strong for the company. All in all, the social network has 1.2 billion monthly active users with 745million users accessing the social network daily. Facebook plans to introduce a range of standalone mobile apps that will tie into a Facebook ecosystem of sorts. While Home proved to be a failure in this regard, Facebook Messenger has set a precedent by being a particularly slick app and we're excited to see what else the company pulls out of its hat.
In the latest report from IDC(International Data Corporation), tablet shipments have grown to 76.9 million in the last quarter of 2013. The 76.9 million number is a big increase of 62.4% over the previous quarter, but is a relatively small increase when compared to the sales during 2012 - an increase of 28.2% .
Though the sales of tablets continue to increase, the growth has been slowed down and that is assumed to be because of the consumer saturation. During the course of 2013, total tablet shipments across the world totaled 217.1 million units, which shows a growth of 50.6% over the previous year 2012 during which 144.2 million units were shipped.
Apple continues to be the industry leader in the tablet segment having shipped 26million tablets during Q4 2014 while it had shipped 14.1million tablets in Q3 2014. In Q4 2012, Apple had shipped close to 22.9million units. The year-over-year growth of just 13.5% was well below the expectations and is probably a sign of things to come.
Vendor
4Q13 Unit Shipments
4Q13 Market Share
4Q12 Unit Shipments
4Q12 Market Share
Year-over-Year Growth
Apple
26.0
33.8%
22.9
38.2%
13.5%
Samsung
14.5
18.8%
7.8
13.0%
85.9%
Amazon.com Inc.
5.8
7.6%
5.9
9.9%
-1.7%
Asus
3.9
5.1%
3.1
5.1%
25.8%
Lenovo
3.4
4.4%
0.8
1.3%
325.0%
Others
23.3
30.3%
19.5
32.5%
19.5%
Total
76.9
100.0%
60
100.0%
28.2%
As you can see from the table above, the tablet industry's year over year growth is around 28% and that is mainly because of the ...
Oppo had earlier revealed that they are entering the Indian market today, and right now, they have done just that, at an event in New Delhi. This event also sees the launch of company flagship, the Oppo N1, for a price of Rs. 39,999, for the 16 GB version. The N1, initially rumoured to be a camera centric device, turned out to be a lot more, which we had documented in our review earlier. It has a 5.9 inch 1080p display, a 13 megapixel camera sitting on a rotating swivel, a rear touch sensor for one handed usage, a really cool bluetooth accessory and so on. The hardware alone does not tell the entire story because the N1 is perhaps the most open device on the market, with an unlocked bootloader and a custom recovery that can install ROMs like Cyanogen Mod without any modification. Now that it has landed in India, can the "13 MP selfie" phone make its mark in a highly competitive market?
Here are the complete specifications of the Oppo N1 in case you are wondering -
Oppo N1 Specifications
5.9 inch full HD 1920×1080 IPS LCD display
Dimensions – 170.7 x 82.6 x 9 mm Weight – 213g
1.7 GHz ...
Samsung is known to release new flagship devices along with a lot of software features and gimmicks. Samsung's TouchWiz UI is one of the heaviest skins in terms of RAM consumption and it comes with a lot of default apps that you cannot uninstall. According to the rumor mill, Samsung's TouchWiz reportedly getting a big overhaul alongside the launch of Samsung Galaxy S5. But just a couple of days back, Google and Samsung entered into an agreement for patents and Samsung may be toning down on the TouchWiz to make it more Google like.
SamMobile, one of the trusted sources regarding Samsung news, has got hold of a new application for Samsung devices called as Samsung Life Times and has posted a few screenshots from the application. Samsung Life Times is expected to be arriving on Samsung Galaxy S5 when it launches.
According to the leaked screenshots, Samsung Life Times looks to a be daily journal kind of application that collects information from various apps and events. It is also expected to create a log for the user to view their recent doings. Life Times collects data from various sources within the phone that includes applications like - call logs, messages, photos, Facebook, ...
Out of nowhere Google is sold off its Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for a deal worth close to 3 billion USD earlier today. The almost 3 billion USD sale doesn't include the Advanced Technology and Projects group led by former DARPA director Regina Dugan. The Verge was able to confirm this and according to the sources, the team will be integrated with Google's Android team which is headed by Sundar Pichai. Regina Dugan will reportedly report to Sundar Pichai, but is expected to maintain an individual role.
The Advanced Technology and Projects team which is working on Project Ara has about 100 members and is headed by Regina Dugan. All the team members are likely to shift their office from Sunnyvale to the Mountain View campus. Project Ara is a modular phone concept that allows for re-usage of phone elements and it is expected to be the future. The team also handles other projects like security tattoos and biotech sensors.
Google plans to use its resources to scale Project Ara and consider it as a serious option. As a result of the Motorola-Lenovo deal, Lenovo will have a license to the patents held by the Advanced Technology and Projects team, but the patents ...
Sony has rolled out a big software update for its interchangeable lenses - Sony QX10 and Sony QX100. Both the lenses were announced alongside the company's current flagship - Sony Xperia Z1, at the IFA in Berlin. The latest software update has the version number 2.0 and brings along with it a couple of changes for the lenses.
The changes include
1. Full HD 1080p video recording - initially it recorded videos at 1440x1080 pixels and now it has been bumped up to 1920x1080. The frame rate remains the same at 30 fps.
2. Improved ISO range - for the QX10, the ISO range has been increased from ISO 1600 to ISO 3200 while the higher end QX100 has got a bigger bump from ISO 3200 to ISO 12800.
3. Shutter Speed Priority Shooting Mode - this is only for the high end QX100 and brings direct access control to shutter speed.
The update is available on Sony server and you can check out the link below for each of the product. There are detailed instructions on how to update the firmware in Sony's site.
Via | QX10 | QX100
Carphone Warehouse, one of the largest retailers with over 1700 stores in Europe, is entering into a crucial partnership with Samsung, in which it will operate 60 new Samsung exclusive stores across Europe, as a "preferred partner". This is also an interesting development for Samsung, as this deal will massively improve the retail foot print in all the Android-loving parts of Europe. These new 60 stores will be Samsung exclusive experiences, with Carphone Warehouse contributing its part with retail experience and run Samsung's stores with what it calls "Carphone Warehouse's assisted sales tool and connectivity platform", all with Samsung tablets.
The new stores will be rolled out in the next three months across seven European markets: UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands. The stores will have a premium look and feel and will sell Samsung mobile communications products across Samsung's full range of mobiles, tablets, laptops and wearables.
As mentioned earlier, the Samsung exclusive Carphone Warehouse stores will sell all the available Samsung devices, including wearables, as they will feature a prominent role in the future. On the new experience offered -
Shoppers can expect an exciting new customer experience which merges retail and technology innovations such as Carphone Warehouse's ...
Games are usually the best examples to showcase any new platform. The iPhone got a ton of mini apps and games that showed off its accelerometer and touch screen, which were novel at that time. Similarly, Google has developed 5 mini games for its innovative "Glass" wearable product, to showcase the hardware's unique capabilities. As of now, the Glass can already let you make calls, get directions and so on, but games are something new. Having unboxed the Glass and found it to work really well, we can't wait to test these mini games which might give us a glimpse of the kind of apps that Google will let developers make for the wearable product, that just got a lot more socially acceptable with new frames for prescription lenses. Anyways, here is a video representation of the 5 mini games Google has developed -
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9naxeHGIaRY
As you noticed above, the 5 games are really basic and show case the different features of the hardware. Most pointing types are the combination of accelerometer and gyroscope doing the head tracking, and one of them uses voice commands for trigger actions. These are all designed to get you engaged when you just are bored for ...
After last year's Slide 3G 7334i with dual SIM support and voice calling, iBall has launched Slide 3G 7334Q-10 with a new design. It has a 7-inch (1024 x 600 pixels) capacitive touch screen display, powered by a quad-core 1.3 GHz processor and runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). It comes with a 2-megapixel rear camera and a VGA front-facing camera. It has 3G connectivity, dual SIM support, voice calling and FM Radio.
This would directly compete with the Swipe MTV Slash 4X that was launched last week.
Commenting on the launch, Sandeep Parasrampuria, Director iBall, said,
iBall Slide is known for performance and we are delighted to present 3G-7334Q-10, one of the very few 7” Quad core tablets available in India. The product is power and feature packed to delight every user!
iBall Slide 3G 7334Q-10 Specifications
7-inch (1024 x 600 pixels) capacitive touch screen OGS display
Dual SIM with dual standby
Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) OS
1.3 GHz quad-core processor
2MP rear camera
0.3MP (VGA) front-facing camera
3.5mm audio jack, FM Radio
3G HSPA+ (via SIM card slots), WiFi 802.11 b/g/n , Bluetooth, GPS / A-GPS
1GB DDR3 RAM, 8GB internal memory, 32GB expandable memory with microSD
3000 mAh battery
The iBall Slide 3G 7334Q-10 is priced at an MRP of Rs. 11,499.
The booming of Internet in the late 90s is often referred to as the "Dot com boom" where the "dot" refers just a dot and the "com" represents a domain address. The "dot com" boom referred to the rise of Internet companies and mainly because .com was one of the most used domains in the Internet. Until now, there hasn't been much of a fuzz about what comes after the second dot in a web address.
Today, the Internet is opening up and seven new domains -.bike, .singles, .clothing, .guru, .holdings, .plumbing, and .ventures are going live. The requirement for specific domains are mainly to appreciate the core functionality of a company. The ".bike" domain for example will be one of the primary requirements of a company that manufactures bikes or is solely focused on bikes.
With the addition of seven new domains, the list of TLD(top level domains) is expanding and according to plans, will continue to expand. ICANN(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the organization responsible for maintaining and taking care of the Internet domains initially approved the expansion of Internet domains in 2011, but the process has been halted citing security reasons. ICANN came up with plans to ...
Samsung has finally replaced Nokia as India’s Most Trusted Brand, according to a recent survey conducted by research firm Trust Research Advisory (TRA). Nokia, which continued to retain the first position in Brand Trust Report 2011, 2012 and 2013 has been pushed to 5th spot. Sony moved one spot up from 2013, to the 2nd place. LG moved 6 places up from last year to 4th spot. As you can see on the table below, Nokia is the only company in the Mobile Phone category since Samsung, Sony and LG come under consumer electronics category, even though they are popular for their smartphones.
Micromax has moved up 74 places and holds 45th rank. In the personal gadgets category Micromax holds the second spot behind Nokia, and BlackBerry holds the 3rd spot as the most trusted brand. New entrant Xolo holds 15th rank in the personal gadgets category and its overall ranking in BTR 2014 is 280. Check out the entire list of brands in the personal gadgets category here.
Coming to the Telecom sector, Airtel has moved down from last year 9th place to 64th place this year. Vodafone and Idea have moved to 20 and 21 rankings, respectively. MTS has moved ...
Samsung goes after Apple's business again. This time, Samsung follows Apple into the educational domain where the presence of Apple's iPad seems to have increased. Apple's iPads have a lot of content in the educational domain and with the ever expanding iTunes Textbooks and iTunes U Course Manager, it justifies the demand of tablets in the educational domain. Samsung has spotted a way to increase its tablet market share and has announced a tablet with a special focus on educational content.
In the US FETC 2014, Samsung has announced that it will be launching a Galaxy Tab with focus on educational sector. Samsung has also confirmed that the tablets will be available for K-12 school deployments for the 2014-2015 academic year.
The tablet will offer a easier setup process and come with easier device management. It will also have access to curated educational content, and other features such that it caters to the need of dynamic, digital teaching and learning. Among the software features that will make it useful for students, it comes integrated with Google Play for Education, Google's content store for K-12 schools. Integration with Google Play for Education will grant the teachers an access to a wide selection of teacher-approved apps, books, ...
Dell was rumoured to be working on a really unique product, an Android dongle that could run the operating system, in a compact form factor comparable to a Chromecast. As wild as the idea seemed, it has now taken the form of a real product in the Dell Wyse Cloud Connect, an Android dongle, aimed at enterprise users who want to carry their work for access everywhere, in a compact form factor. The dongle runs Android 4.1 Jellybean and can be used on any HDMI supported screen, like a HDTV, a projector, MHL compatible touch monitors(for full Android touch functionality), or can be paired up with Bluetooth mice and keyboards for the usual interaction like a PC. Out of the box, the Wyse Cloud Connect will also run Citrix, VMWare or Microsoft remote desktop clients. Dell hopes this will entice enterprise users for the portability it offers.
If the actual specifications are concerned -
Runs on Android 4.1 JellyBean
HDMI/MHL video interface
Additional functionality through OTG/MHL
1080p full HD support
Multi core ARM Cortex A9 chip, but Dell doesn't say which
Additional ports - Display port, MHL/OTG micro USB host, Mini USB, micro SD card slot
8 GB in built flash storage and 1 GB of RAM
Enterprise level ...
Facebook has taken the wraps off Paper, a new social news aggregator app that is designed to help you bring all the important stories, and even let you create your own. The app is first of the many apps that are in the works at Facebook Creative Labs, which plans to unveil a suite of mobile apps soon. Paper, which has very similar ideologies as Flipboard, shows you all the long form stories from your news feed, and lets you like and comment on them from the app, much like Facebook home, with a really cool presentation of full screen images and a card-like interface for other content. Other than that, you can also add your own categories and populate them with your own desired sources, just like you would, on a traditional news aggregator. Here is a promo video of the app in action
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhrbT9O6kW8
Storytelling and sharing have been reimagined in Paper to show stories at their best.
Everything responds to your touch so you can pick up or thumb through stories with simple, natural movements
You can tilt your phone to explore high-resolution panoramic photos from corner to corner, and see faces and other important details up close
Fullscreen autoplay videos come ...
Facebook for BlackBerry 10 devices has been updatedto version 10.3, that brings options to tag friends in a status post or a shared post as you type, notifications when new stories arrive, option to delete or hide your posts and importantly offline viewing that lets downloads all the content prior to going offline, for offline viewing.
A minor Facebook 10.2.2 update for BlackBerry 10, back in October brought option to preview links, share or re-post news stories and photos and more features. Even though the Facebook app doesn't get new features when it rolls out to Android and iOS platforms, the BlackBerry 10 app gets updated once in few months, bringing new features.
New features in Facebook 10.3 for BlackBerry 10
Tag friends in Status Posts and Comments
Delete or hide posts on your own timeline‘New Stories' active link in the Newsfeed informs you as new stories are posted
Enhanced caching, so you can access all content downloaded prior to going offline, when offline
Screen Reader Accessibility Support (for buttons, jewels, and newsfeed)
Download Facebook for BlackBerry 10 from the BlackBerry World for free, if you don’t have it yet.
Spanish handset maker Geeksphone unveiled their high-end smartphone called Revolution last month. We already know that the phone has a 4.7-inch (960 x 540 pixels) capacitive touch screen IPS display, powered by a 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2560 processor with PowerVR SGX544 GPU and Hyper-Threading technology and runs dual OS, Android and Mozilla Open Web technology Boot2Geck. It also lets you change the OS with just a couple clicks. The company has not revealed the Android version yet.
Geeksphone Revolution specifications
4.7-inch (960 x 540 pixels) capacitive touch screen IPS display
1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2560 processor with PowerVR SGX544 GPU
Dual OS - Android and Boot2Geck
8MP camera with LED flash, 1080p video recording
2MP front-facing camera
3.5mm Audio Jack
1GB RAM, 4GB internal storage, expandable memory up to 32GB via micro SD slot
G‐Sensor, E‐Compass , Light/Proximity Sensor
3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS
2000 mAh battery
As Geeksphone announced last month, the Revolution is expected go on sale sometime in Q1 2014. No word on the exact launch date or pricing yet.
Via
