As reported on The Verge. New icon set for 2014’s flagship Galaxy By Vlad Savov A week ago, Samsung sent out invitations to its first big Unpacked event of 2014— taking place on February 24th — with the prominent inclusion of the number 5 in the title. Today, the company’s buildup steps up with the revelation of a new icon set, hinting at a redesigned TouchWiz interface and extending the theme of 5. Each of the newly rounded…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Jordan Crook Curved displays are officially a thing. The LG G Flex, the Korean company’s latest attempt to battle back Samsung, is going to be available for pre-order at AT&T starting this Friday, January 24. Sprint pulled the trigger last week, announcing that the phone would be available for pre-order on January 31, but AT&T has obviously beaten the yellow carrier to the punch by a week. Still, AT&T never mentioned in its announcement…
As reported on Engadget. BY SHARIF SAKR You may never have heard of Geeksphone, unless you take a particular interest inFirefox OS, but the Spanish manufacturer could be about to garner some global attention. It says it’ll launch a new handset at Mobile World Congress next month that will prioritize privacy and security instead of all the intrusions that smartphone users usually have to put up with from carriers, advertisers and the occasional government agency. We’re looking at an Android-based…
As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS When Motorola said that a CDMA version of the Moto G would reach the US in January, it was being overly cautious. Best Buy has confirmed that it’s already selling the Verizon edition of the budget smartphone in its retail stores; as soon as a store has inventory, you can pick one up. And it’s cheap, too. At $100 off-contract, Verizon’s Moto G is less expensive than both its GSM equivalent and many slower, smallerdevices. You…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Josh Constine FB could look a lot more like TV soon. While Vine and Instagram Video are booming, you don’t see many people natively uploading videos to Facebook. But now Facebook is bringing auto-play for native videos to all users aftertesting the feature in September. And it’s just the beginning of a huge push to put Facebook in motion. Previously, any video uploaded to Facebook directly or shared to the News Feed from…
As reported on Engadget. By Darren Murph The iPhone 5s was expected. The iPhone 5c, on the other hand, was merely rumored. Now that Apple has taken the wraps off of two new iPhone products, it’s the newest range that strikes us as the most curious. For months, pundits have wondered if and when Apple would attack two obvious markets: the large-screen market — which Samsung is lapping up in supreme fashion at the moment — and developing markets. The…
As reported on The Verge. By Casey Newton An anonymous account bullies teens, foils administrators School’s out for summer in Hudson, Ohio, but students haven’t left campus behind completely. They couldn’t if they tried: an unsettling source of gossip has agitated the student body, broadcasting classmates’ confessions about their crushes, enemies, and sexual escapades. It’s anonymous, unregulated, and occasionally veers into bullying. And it’s all happening on Twitter, powered by a controversial Q&A service calledAsk.fm. At…
As reported on TechCrunch. by JORDAN CROOK The Galaxy S4 has an easy mode, and more importantly, the Galaxy S4 needs an easy mode. This necessity is a double-edged sword. It means that the technology built into Samsung’s latest generation smartphone does things you’ve never seen before, and maybe couldn’t even imagine. However, really using that technology isn’t as simple as you might think, and could be downright overwhelming to a novice smartphone user. This is the theme I kept…
As reported on Engadget. By Mat Smith Hitting one of Blackberry’s key markets in the British Isles, its new smartphone platform (and the Balance software that divides work and personal profiles on the Z10) hasn’t passed the security rigors of the UK’s Communications Electronics Security Group. According to The Guardian, handset contracts with the government and NHS total in the tens of thousands, while the older BB 7.1 passed the ‘restricted’ security level — two levels below the presumably agent-friendly ‘secret’ level…
As reported on Wired. BY ALEXANDRA CHANG Emily Nelson browses phones at the AT&T store in San Francisco, CA. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired It only seems like everyone has a smartphone. Despite the dozens of smartphones churned out each year by the likes of Samsung, Apple, Motorola, HTC and more, just 55.5 percent of mobile users in the United States have one, according to Nielsen data from July 2012. But that’s changing, quickly. Two in three American phone buyers will choose a…