We are no strangers to seeing Android devices being rooted ahead of their launch and the upcoming Galaxy S III is no different. The root comes courtesy Android developer Chainfire and you will be able to find more details regarding the root on his post on xda-developers forum.

Chainfire gives special credit to Samsung for this root. Apparently, the whole process was a piece of cake compared to some of the other devices, including previous Galaxy models. It seems Samsung has made it very easy for developers to unlock and root the phone. Read more »

Samsung has announced that it has begun mass production of industry’s first 4 gigabit LPDDR2 memory for mobile devices based on the 20nm technology.

So what does this mean for the user? Well, for starters the memory modules will now be smaller, which should let the hardware manufacturers pack in even more things in the limited space inside mobile devices. Read more »

Sony has just announced two new cameras for the semi-professional consumers. The first one is the NEX-F3, a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. It is the cheapest model in Sony’s NEX line and is to the NEX-5N what the NEX-3 was to the NEX-5.

The NEX-F3 has a 16.1 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor from the NEX-5N. It’s a pretty large sensor and similar to what you might find on a DSLR but unlike on a DSLR, there is no mirror in between to bounce the light to the viewfinder. Instead you get a digital viewfinder that takes the video feed directly from the sensor. Read more »

Mozilla has released a new beta version of the Firefox browser for Android and it brings with it some major changes. The biggest one of all is that the app is written in Java, which is native to Android, instead of the Mozilla developed XUL used on the previous versions. Due to this, you can expect some major improvements in the performance of the app.

Other big change is the new UI, which looks a lot better. It has what Mozilla calls the ‘Awesome Screen’. It’s very similar to the screen you see in Chrome for Android, with the address bar at the top, thumbnails for frequently visited sites below and right at the bottom a list of recently closed tabs. Read more »

Within a week of Google releasing an update for its iOS mobile app, Facebook too has released an update for its mobile apps and website that changes the way posts are displayed.

The posts are no longer displayed in a contiguous manner but instead appear in their own separate boxes. But most importantly, images now appear 3x bigger than before and span from edge to edge. Albums are also bigger now and show thumbnails for the contained images arranged in a single large grid. You can see from the first two pictures how it looks and how it looked before in the third picture. Read more »

Last week a member at xda-developers managed to extract the Flipboard app on the Galaxy S III and made it available for everyone else to download.

It’s obvious that by now the people at Flipboard must be aware of this but instead of trying to somehow restrict the functionality of the app to prevent people from using it on phones other than the Galaxy S III, they have pushed an update for it. Read more »

We all know a biopic based on the life of Steve Jobs is already being made and that Ashton Kutcher has been cast to play Jobs due to Kutcher’s remarkable resemblance to him back when he was young.

TMZ has now acquired photographs of Kutcher on the sets of the movie (which is reportedly being called ‘Jobs: Get Inspired’) dressed in Jobs’ famous blue Levi’s jeans and black turtleneck, which was originally designed by Issey Miyake exclusively for Jobs. And all of this strikes me as a bit odd. Read more »

Apple has changed the nomenclature for the new iPad in select markets from the iPad Wi-Fi + 4G to a more vague iPad W-Fi + Cellular. This is due to customer complaints regarding the use of the term “4G” after the launch of the new iPad a couple of months ago.

Recently, Apple was sued in Australia because they referred to it as iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, even though the 4G LTE functionality does not work on Australia’s LTE network. Read more »

Popular and award winning puzzle solving game Machinarium has landed on Android. It’s available on the Play Store for $3.99 and only works with devices that have an HD display.

The game involves guiding a little robot through a steam punk world and to progress to the next stage you have to solve puzzles. Read more »

Leica, the Rolls Royce of camera manufacturers, has announced the newest member of their flagship rangefinder cameras. The Leica M Monochrom is a very specialized camera that is designed to take just black and white pictures and nothing else.

Now before you start laughing and wonder how is this different than a regular camera shooting in black and white mode, let me explain. Read more »

NVIDIA has announced the third graphics card in the Kepler series called the GeForce GTX 670. As you can tell, it sits below the current fastest single GPU graphics card, the GTX 680, and is priced a $100 less at $399. The GTX 670 is meant to compete against AMD’s Radeon HD 7950.

The GPU on the GTX 670 is the same 28nm GK104 GPU found on the GTX 680, except it is clocked slightly lower and certain features are toned down to get a slightly lower performance but at the same time, lower power consumption as well. Read more »

Facebook has announced that it will soon be launching App Center, their version of an application store that will house all the applications and games that you currently enjoy on Facebook. Apart from giving you one stop shop for all your apps, App Center will now also allow paid apps and games, something that was missing from Facebook so far.

The App Center will be available from the web, as well as the iOS and Android version of the Facebook mobile app. The App Center will start rolling out to users in a few weeks but developers can sign up right now if they want their apps on the App Center. Read more »

Apple has released two new updates today, one for OS X Lion and the other for the desktop Safari browser. The OS X update brings Lion to 10.7.4 and includes some crucial security fixes.

Recently OS X came under fire when the OS would display FileVault passwords in plain text file for users who upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion and kept their FileVault settings. The issue has now been patched in the latest update. Read more »

The iOS version of Google+ has always trailed behind Android and for obvious reasons. Android belongs to Google so naturally they would want to take better care of their users. But with the latest update to the iOS app, the tables have turned.

Google has taken what was a mundane looking app to something that looks absolutely stunning on the iPhone. Your stream has been completely revamped and instead of a simple looking list of posts you now see the posts listed with big image thumbnails. Read more »

ENVY, HP’s family of thin and light notebooks just grew by five members. HP just announced the ENVY Spectre XT, ENVY Sleekbook 14 and 15.6-inch and the ENVY Ultrabook 14 and 15.6-inch models.

Priced at $999, the ENVY Spectre XT comes with a 13.3-inch 1366 x 768 resolution display, third generation Intel Core (Ivy Bridge) processor, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, USB 3.0, HDMI, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, backlit keyboard, Beats Audio with quad speakers, eight hours battery life, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit with two-year subscription to Norton Internet Security, full versions of Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 10. It will go on sale on June 8. Read more »