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Showing posts from July, 2012

Dropbox doubles the available storage for paid plans, introduces a new 500GB tier

Dropbox has just brough some good news to its Pro customers, doubling the available storage for the Pro 50 and Pro 100 plans. This means that if you subscribe to one of these you will get your 100GB and 200GB of storage, respectively, for the same price as before. Even if you are already a paying Dropbox customer you still get your quota doubled. And if that still doesn’t seem enough to you, Dropbox announced the launch of a whole new plan offering 500GB of storage. It will set you back $49.99 if you choose the pay monthly option or $499.99 for a whole year if you pay in advance

Tweetbot for Mac now out in alpha

The ridiculously anticipated Tweetbot for Mac is nowhere near its final stage yet but the developers have taken note of the incredible demand and so they probably decided to release an alpha version for now. As you can expect, this version of the app will be buggy as it is still being developed but those who have used the app have already proclaimed it as the best Twitter client they have ever used.

Nexus 7 gets an unboxing video, starring UFC champion Georges St-Pierre and the ninjas

Google has a tradition of doing unboxing videos of each of their Nexus devices. The videos aren’t made by Google themselves, merely sponsored, with Patrick Boivin being the real mastermind behind them. In each of these videos the theme has been a bunch of toy ninjas unboxing the phone, shot in stop motion animation. But for this video, Boivin managed to rope in GSP, the mixed martial artist and the current Welterweight Champion of the UFC, Georges St-Pierre, who takes part as Dr. Paul

Where’s My Perry?’ for iOS and Android game review

Where’s My Perry? is the latest game from Disney for iOS and Android. The game is based on the previous and highly popular title Where’s My Water? but uses modified gameplay mechanics and different characters to warrant its existence as a separate game. Where’s My Perry? stars Perry the Platypus, also known as Agent P from the Disney animated show Phineas and Ferb . Now those of you who are not six years-old would probably not recognize him but apparently he’s quite popular among the kids, which is why Disney chose to make an entire game around the character

Samsung launches S Health wellness app for Galaxy S III

Samsung has launched an app which allows Galaxy S III owners to sync their smartphones with certain medical equipment to effectively measure and monitor vital health statistics. S Health can connect to various weight, blood pressure or glucose monitors to present a health profile over a period of time that can be viewed or shared via SNS services.

Sony Xperia ion for AT&T completed our battery test, here go the results

We are all well aware by now that the combination of Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 chipset and LTE network connectivity do not bode well for the battery life of a smartphone. Throw in the Sony Xperia ion’s HD screen in the mix, and its easy to guess that the 1900mAh non-removable battery has a lot to deal with. As always we took a look at the 3G talk time performance of the Sony Xperia ion first for AT&T.

Sony Mobile will move its headquarters from Sweden to Tokyo on October 1st

This should hardly catch anyone by surprise, given the fact that Sony’s acquisition of Ericsson’s stake in their joint venture took place a few months back. The newly formed Sony Mobile with move its headquarters from Lund, Sweden, closer to the center of everything Sony in Tokyo, Japan. Sony Mobile has a rather large operation in the Nordic country, so it is yet to be determined exactly which operations will be moved

BlackBerry App World hits the three billion downloads mark

Yes, yes, you are right – this number is rather paltry compared to what Apple and Google have been recording, but, nevertheless, it is the closest thing to good news we’ve had coming from RIM in quite some time. The BlackBerry App World has served three billion downloads since it opened for business back in 2009. A cool one third of the abovementioned milestone has been accomplished in the last six months alone.

Windows 8 to be released in October, RTM version comes in August

Microsoft has announced today that the Windows 8 development goes according to schedule and shed some more details on the actual market availability of the platform. Windows 8 will reach the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) stage in the first week of August. This means the OS will be ready by then and Microsoft will seed it to its OEM partners.

Three new ads of the Galaxy S III show its sharing prowess in “real life” scenarios

Samsung has ousted a trio of lighthearted ads for its Galaxy S III flagship, which focus on the AllShare Play, Group Cast and Share Shot abilities. The first one is of a guy that “suffers” the nuisance of having to show a photo to a group of people, who apparently don’t own smartphones.

‘Where’s My Perry?’ for iOS and Android game review Nokia 808 PureView takes part in our battery triathlon ‘Dead Trigger’ for iOS and Android game review LG Optimus Vu drops by our office, brings its stylus with it Google Nexus 7 takes on the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 Latest Switch view Certain Nexus 7 displays suffer from severe image persistence issue July 4th, 2012, 09:07 by Prasad 67 comments Image persistence is a problem with LCD and plasma displays where if a certain image is displayed continuously on the screen for a long time, it gets “burned in”, which means even after the contents of the screen change, you can still faintly see the previous image on top of the current contents of the screen. Unlike screen burn-in, this effect is temporary but can still be annoying. This issue was common on plasma displays but was greatly reduced on LCDs. It seems, however, the display on the new Nexus 7 is not one of them. Read more » iFixit teardown lets us take a look what’s inside the $200 Google Nexus 7 July 3rd, 2012, 19:40 by Vince 22 comments The fellas from iFixit have managed to get their hands on a Nexus 7 tablet Google I/O edition and did what they are best at – tearing gadgets down. Besides the usual innards of the tablet that we already know, iFixit found out that the 1280 x 800 pixels display is permanently attached to the Corning Glass protection layer. Read more » Samsung unveils EX2F Wi-Fi-enabled digicam with super-bright F/1.4 lens and 1/1.7″ sensor July 3rd, 2012, 17:59 by Chip 44 comments Samsung has just announced an interesting addition to its lineup of point-and-shoot cameras. Called Samsung EX2F, the new digicam features a large (by compact camera standards) 1/1.7″ 12MP sensor and a really bright F/1.4 Schneider-Kreuznach zoom lens. The Samsung EX2F lens covers the modest zoom range of 24-79mm (in 35mm equivalent), but that’s the price you have to pay for keeping a wide-aperture lens within a reasonable size. But the advantages of having this wide an aperture, makes up for the short focal range by a mile. Even at its maximum telephoto, the lens still offers shooting at the respectable F2.7, which most digicams can hardly match even in the wide end. Read more » Skype is not supported on Nokia Belle, keeps crashing on some phones, here’s a solution July 3rd, 2012, 16:38 by Peter 75 comments We received several worrying tip in our inbox – Skype isn’t supported on Nokia Belle and it won’t work properly, specifically on the Nokia N8. Sure enough, we found multiple reports of crashes on Belle and going to www.skype.com/m we were greeted with a message that our Belle-running Nokia (for the record, 808 PureView) isn’t a supported device. A bit of Googling revealed a workaround too, but you better sit down for this because it’s going to sound silly. Read more » Jelly Bean statue in Google headquarters suffers damage due to overheating July 3rd, 2012, 14:56 by Vince 46 comments The Jelly Beans statute placed in Google’s headquarters to celebrate the launch of Android 4.1 has suffered major damages from overheating. The “head” of the Jelly Bean Android statue has melted and as a result there were some jelly beans spilled on the ground. In fact, according to Android engineer Dan Morrill some of the goodies inside are missing. Read more » Final Fantasy III comes to Android, costs an arm and a leg July 3rd, 2012, 12:38 by Ian 29 comments One of the most prominent members of the Final Fantasy legacy, Final Fantasy III, just made its way to Android with improved visuals. After more than a year of being available on iOS, the FF III port is of the updated 2006 version which features full 3D graphics. The title is already available at the Google Play store for the rather steep price of $15.99. Read more » Windows Phone 8 to possibly get the new Arc Soft keyboard July 3rd, 2012, 10:49 by Prasad 25 comments Single handed typing on smartphones can often be a slow and frustrating process (unless you have something like Swype). It seems, though, that Microsoft may have a solution for this problem in the form of the new Arc Soft keyboard for Windows Phone 8 devices. As you can see above the keyboard is curved so that all the keys are well within your thumb’s reach. In addition to that, the keyboard reduces the number of keys by assigning multiple characters to a single key. Read more » Microsoft offers existing Windows users to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $39.99 July 3rd, 2012, 07:24 by Prasad 38 comments So far we have learnt a lot about Windows 8 since Microsoft announced it last year but the one thing we did not know so far was the price. Now Windows has been historically been a fairly expensive piece of software so people were worried that Microsoft might overshoot it again this time. Thankfully, that does not seem to be the case. Microsoft has announced on its Windows blog that those who are already running a legitimate version of Windows on their current PC, whether it is Windows 7, Vista or even XP, are eligible to a Windows 8 Pro upgrade for only $39.99. Read more » Alcatel and ZTE to manufacture first Boot 2 Gecko phones July 2nd, 2012, 19:12 by Vince 15 comments Mozilla’s HTML 5 based Boot 2 Gecko is getting traction with Alcatel and ZTE jumping on the bandwagon to produce the first ever devices running the mobile OS. At MWC 2012 Mozilla announced the first ever Boot 2 Gecko devices are going to launch in Brazil by the carrier Vivo. Now, the project has been backed up globally and carriers such as Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, and Telenor are also going to start offering devices. Read more » Samsung launches S Health wellness app for Galaxy S III July 2nd, 2012, 18:43 by Ian 14 comments Samsung has launched an app which allows Galaxy S III owners to sync their smartphones with certain medical equipment to effectively measure and monitor vital health statistics. S Health can connect to various weight, blood pressure or glucose monitors to present a health profile over a period of time that can be viewed or shared via SNS services. Read more » Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy S III can now enjoy Jelly Beans with a custom ROM July 2nd, 2012, 18:00 by Vince 42 comments After Google pushed the Galaxy Nexus Jelly Bean OTA update at I/O and released the Nexus 7 factory image for download, XDA developers have been hard at work porting the new version of Android to their favorite smartphones. The HTC One X already got it, and now it’s turn for Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy S III to follow suit. Read more » Sony announces new XQD S series cards, the speedometer shows 168MB/s July 2nd, 2012, 16:07 by Peter 11 comments Sony has freshened up its XQD card lineup – the new S series cards will launch with 64GB capacity and a whopping 168MB/s data transfer rates. The old H series maxed out at 125MB/s. A Nikon D4 can pipe 108 RAW shots in a non-stop burst, which according to Sony is enough to capture the men’s 100m sprint final from start to finish if you set the framerate at 10fps. Read more » VLC media player for Android beta is now available for download

It didn’t take too long after the official announcement for VideoLAN to launch a beta version of the famous VLC media player for Android. Naturally being in beta, the app might be unstable at times, although most of the early feedback is positive. Mind you, it’ll run only on devices with an ARMv7 processor, which supports the NEON engine.

Dead Trigger’ for iOS and Android game review

From staring at a black, pixellated line that was supposed to be a snake to impressive high definition 3D graphics being powered by equally impressive multi-core processors, mobile gaming has come a long way in the past ten years. Today, we are going to take a look at a game that falls firmly in the latter category, called Dead Trigger . Dead Trigger is developed by Madfinger Games, the same people who have given us the excellent Shadowgun and Samurai II: Vengeance . Dead Trigger is a first person shooter that involves everyone’s favorite pastime, shooting zombies in the face

Rovio’s Amazing Alex coming to iOS and Android this month

Developer of the obscenely popular Angry Birds series of games Rovio is now set to launch a brand new game for iOS and Android devices. The game is called Amazing Alex and is set to launch this month. If you are familiar with Rube Goldberg contraptions you already know how to play this game. The game will require you to setup objects into creating a complication contraption in order to achieve a simple goal. Of course, there is no one way to achieve the goal and you can come up with various ways to achieve the

LG Optimus 4X HD fails to impress in battery life test despite power-saving core and large battery

The LG Optimus 4X HD uses NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chipset, featuring a special power-saving CPU core which NVIDIA made a lot of noise about. Couple that with a large 2140mAh battery and the Optimus 4X HD should be more than simply adequate in terms of battery life, right? The HTC One X has similar specs (Tegra 3, 4.7″ 720p LCD), but a smaller battery (1800mAh), so it didn’t quite top our charts even with the above-mentioned extra core. Read on to find out if the LG will do.