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Samsung teams up with illy, not going to make coffee machines though

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Samsung has teamed up with popular espresso maker illy in the UK but the partnership doesn’t have coffee machines planned. Instead Samsung and illy will represent their products in each other’s stores, starting on London’s Regent Street.

Samsung VP Yoinghee Lee has revealed to Pocket-Lint that “this partnership is about sharing a communality between two brands.” – hopes are that by the end of this year Samsung devices will be in two illy coffee shops and illy coffee in two Samsung flagship stores in the UK. Read more »

Skype brings HD video calling on iPhone 5s, forgets non-A7 devices

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Skype for iOS has received an update which mainly benefits Apple’s A7-capable devices. The iPhone 5s, iPad’s Air and iPad mini 2 will get two-way HD video calls, receiving messages while Skype is minimized while other iOS devices will also get faster syncing across all devices.

It’s a big step as the iPhone currently relied heavily on Apple’s FaceTime service, which is limited to the unimpressive HVGA (480px by 360px) resolution. Read more »

Nokia releases three DNG color profiles for Adobe Lightroom

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After enabling RAW shooting support for the Lumia 1020 and 1520 with the Lumia Black update Nokia is now helping those that use it to get better results with Adobe Lightroom.

DNG stands for Digital Negative and is basically a file containing all the information that the sensor has captured (rather than the JPEG images which use lossy compression) and give you more options in post processing. The DNG file has its own color profile and you can tinker with it in order to get interesting or more accurate results but to save you time Nokia has released three color profiles that can be inserted straight into Adobe Lightroom. Read more »

What do you know – iPhone 5c helped boost the iPhone 5s sales

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Immediately after the iPhone 5s and 5c unveiling a theory was formed here at HQ and it was that Apple deliberately placed the iPhone 5c, removing the premium-feeling iPhone 5 with a thicker plastic phone, so that if you wanted the top experience you’d have to go with the more expensive, latest iPhone 5s.

And after two months of selling across the globe the numbers behind both the iPhone 5s and 5c seem to justify that theory completely. The iPhone 5c captured less sales compared to the iPhone 4S from a year ago, while the iPhone 5s outdid last year’s flagship by almost 10%. Did the iPhone 5c push buyers to go for the higher-end, more expensive handset? Read more »

Here’s the Android gallery by the CyanogenMod team

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It’s a well documented fact that the stock Android gallery isn’t the most feature-rich out there. Many have resorted to third party apps (like QuickPic and others) and now the CyanogenMod team has entered the conversation with its very own concept of what the gallery on stock Android should look like.

GalleryNext can be installed through the free-for-all community for beta testers, which can download the beta app on Google Play and begin testing. For now features include a gallery with cloud integration (Flickr, Picasa, Google+, Facebook and Dropbox), grouping images by Moments, video playback, GIF support (yay!) and more. Read more »

Android KitKat-powered LG G2 demoed on video

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While native Korean owners of the LG G2 have basked in KitKat glory for some time now the rest of the G2 faithful around the globe are still waiting for the update to drop in this year’s first quarter.

To help the time pass, you can check out a video of the fresh new software running on an LG G2, recorded with Android SDK’s ADB utility. Check it out after the break. Read more »

Weekend poll results: The hots and nots of CES 2014

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This weekend we set out to get your thoughts on the hottest products from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas and now that we have the results it’s time to see what you guys liked and what disappointed you.

While the overall tone remained excited there were things you guys weren’t really thrilled about. This year’s CES brought the first real non-compromises mini smartphone from the Android camp, some exciting slates from Samsung, a new take at smartwatch design by Pebble and more. Read more »

Nvidia Tegra K1 GPU benchmarked, found to be a real beast

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The recently announced Tegra K1 chipset relies on a potent 192 core graphics processing unit which, in Nvidia’s words, is more powerful than the GPUs inside the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles of old and three times that of the iPhone 5s GPU.

And now that we have our first benchmarking scores the claims seem realistic, and possibly even conservative. Appearing on GFXBench’s T-Rex 1080p off-screen benchmark the K1 GPU, running on a reference tablet, achieved 60 frames per second, besting the Tegra 4′s 16 fps, the Snapdragon 800-powered Galaxy Note 3′s 24 fps and the iPad Air’s 27 fps by a significant margin. Read more »

Updated Google Play Services bring turn-based multiplayer and more

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Google has updated its Play Services to version 4.1 bringing new features and improving on others. First off the update brings support for turn-based multiplayer – now developers can create games with turn-based gameplay and Google Play Services will distribute turns among players.

There’s also a preliminary Google Drive API, improved battery life with Google Location Reporting, Google+ sharing and Mobile Ad SDK improvements. Read more »

Kickstarter saw 3 million pledging users from all continents in 2013

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2013 was a good year for Kickstarter and that means it was good for thousands of entrepreneurs and people with good ideas needing financing.

To run the numbers, throughout 2013 Kickstarter gathered $480 million in pledges from 3 million users translating into almost 19 thousand successful projects. Read more »

Xbox Music gains offline playlists on iOS

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Microsoft’s Xbox Music service launched on Android and iOS last year, but lacked one feature many users were longing for.

Saving playlists for offline playback has been something rivals have since their inception and finally, as of its latest update Xbox Music features it on Apple devices. The offline support is listed as coming soon for the Android version as well. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 to come with a PenTile display

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Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Tab Pro line of slates in 12.2″, 10.1″ and 8.4″ flavor at CES 2014 – all sporting the impressive 2560 x 1600 screen resolution and all having LCD displays.

However the middle child in the bunch – the Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 may have a PenTile screen matrix meaning not your typical RGB variety pixel arrangement. Read further for the scoop. Read more »

Stable CyanogenModded Android 4.3 available on the Oppo N1

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Recently launched, the Oppo N1 flaunts its Color OS atop Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean but as Oppo has a collaboration partnership with the CyanogenMod team, the device also has ready access to their beefed-up Android builds. Starting today, owners of the N1 can enjoy a stable CM10.2 ROM, which is based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean.

Running on a great variety of hardware, Google’s Android allows a variety of looks and features across the board. CyanogenMod has the most popular lineup of customized Android ROMs for devices by various manufacturers. Oppo made sure to work closely with the CyanogenMod group when making its Oppo N1 and as a result their smartphone allows one of the easiest ways of installing the custom CM ROMs. Many times installing CyanogenMod would require you to either root your device and/or lose some functionality, but in this case the functionality of the Oppo N1 remains all intact. Read more »

ASUS launches a video trailer for its CES event

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CES is just two weeks away now it’s the time of the year when ASUS starts building up the hype for its upcoming devices. After launching the invite dubbed In Search Of Incredible a few days ago the company is now airing the first video trailer on YouTube.

This one has the US symbol, the Statue of Liberty, as the main character. Instead of holding up its torch it holds up two fingers in the V formation and then splits the tabula ansata (meaning tablet with handles) in two. What we can gather from this is that we may be in for a new transformer slate from ASUS showcased on the CES floor. Read more »

Cut the Rope 2 video shows gameplay, new characters

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We already know that Cut the Rope 2 will debut on December 19 as an iOS exclusive with an Android version following suit early next year.

But now Zeptolab has launched a trailer for the upcoming title which shows some new characters, gameplay and is quite entertaining to watch. We can’t wait for the game to hit – it will cost $0.99 for iPhone and we’re guessing will be either free with ads or the same price on Android smartphones when it drops. Read more »