We talked about the imminent arrival of two popular Valve titles, Portal and Half-Life 2, on the NVIDIA Shield in the past. Thankfully, NVIDIA didn’t make us wait too long and both games are now available on the Play Store.

For the three of you who still haven’t heard of either Portal or Half-Life 2, the former is a futuristic first person shooter where you primarily solve puzzles in a lab and the second is a first-person action game. Both games are ridiculously popular and for good reason. Half-Life 2 revolutionized the first person shooter genre with its terrific story, characters, gameplay and weapons. And when you though it couldn’t get better, Portal came in and again did something completely different. Read more »

The Motorola Moto E is now official and the company hopes it will be an even bigger success than the Moto G.

And with a tempting price tag of $117, Motorola ought to be on to something with the Moto E. It packs a lot of cool features like scratch-resistant 4.3″ display and a splash-proof construction that aren’t normally features found on such a budget device. Read more »

Gmail for Android now boasts over 1 billion downloads on the Google Play Store. Gmail is the first app to reach this milestone, after Google Play Services package, which is automatically installed on every certified Android device.

The download counter reflects unique installs and not a total number of downloads, including repeats. Don’t think, however, that there are 1 billion active Android Gmail users, as there are most certainly some abandoned or duplicate accounts. Read more »

Samsung may be busy transitioning its tablet lineup to AMOLED screens and expanding it with new sizes, but it hasn’t completely forgotten about the devices it already has. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, which once was a premium mid-sized tablet is starting to receive its Android 4.4 KitKat update across the globe.

The Korean version was the first to get the boost, but only a few hours later the international version joined the fun with Poland the first market to receive it. Unless there are unexpected issues with the update, all Galaxy Note 8.0 units should follow suit shortly. Read more »

The LG G Wear has a new video out today and it shows the watch in its full glory. The video itself doesn’t reveal anything that we didn’t already know but it’s cool enough and keeps the excitement going for the smart wearable’s summer release.

The watch will be available in two colors – stealth black and champagne gold – and its metal body will be water resistant. LG dubs the G watch display as “always-on”, so we’re intrigued to see what really stands behind those words and how would the battery endure. Read more »

Evleaks posted a number of images of HP tablets, though it turns out some of those are already official. Still, there are at least two new tablets among the images, possibly three.

One is very characteristic – a spitting image of the HTC One (M8). It looks quite similar to the HP Slate7 VoiceTab, except the front-facing camera is positioned differently. Read more »

The latest talk of the town has been revolving solely around top tier smartphones like the Xperia Z2 and while it has been flaunting its 4K video capabilities in everyone’s face the Xperia M2 has been sitting on the sidelines waiting for a chance to shine.

We think 15 minutes of fame wouldn’t hurt it, so here comes our hands-on time with the Xperia M2 – Sony’s latest midrange smartphone. Read more »

Now that we have our hands on the Sony Xperia Z2 for more than a booth tour we decided to go straight for what matters. Has Sony tuned its software to make it more mature and deliver better image quality or are 4K and slow-mo video recording the only benefits of the faster chipset?

The hardware remains unchanged – the Xperia Z2 and Z1 share a 20.7 MP snapper with an Exmor RS 1/2.3″ sensor, Sony G Lens f/2.0 aperture and the Bionz image processor. The only thing that potentially tips the scales in either direction is the software processing, which was rather heavy-handed on the Z1 and we hope Sony has tweaked it to achieve better results. Let’s see the samples shall we. Read more »

The Sony Xperia Z2 is finally here and despite coming to market just five months after the Xperia Z1, it improves quite a few bits of the package making for a very tempting upgrade.

The Xperia Z2 is only slightly taller than its predecessor but compensates with less width, girth and lower weight. More importantly, it fits a larger 5.2″ screen and stereo speakers at the front.The display itself comes with Sony’s latest tech, including the Triluminos tech and X-Reality Engine, and this time it’s an IPS unit for improved viewing angles. Read more »

Ephemeral messaging is huge right now with Snapchat leading the charge. Except “ephemeral” messages are more permanent than the name might suggest – charges were filed with the FTC against the photo messenger about this and a couple of other issues.

“If a company markets privacy and security as key selling points in pitching its service to consumers, it is critical that it keep those promises,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. “Any company that makes misrepresentations to consumers about its privacy and security practices risks FTC action.” Read more »

The Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) may no longer be Samsung’s flagship tablet, but it’s certainly one worth considering at the sweet price of $364. You can now have either the black or the white version the slate for that exact price thanks to a promotion held by US retailer Woot!.

You can even grab the 32GB version for just $35 extra or $389 in total. That’s a significant price cut compared to the retail price of the product over at other retailers such as Amazon, which lists the slate for $479 (16 GB) and $529 (32GB). Read more »

It seems the popular Half-Life 2 series is set to arrive on the NVIDIA Shield gaming console. After announcing Portal for the Shield, which will be available starting May 12, it’s Gordon Freeman’s turn to make an appearance on the mobile platform.

Half-Life 2 is an extremely popular series of first person games that includes the original Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two. The series famously ended on a cliffhanger seven years ago and since then fans have been waiting for Half-Life 3 that is yet to be announced. Read more »

Rovio has updated its Angry Birds Go! series with a new episode. The latest version of the app also comes with weekly tournaments, complete with an universal leaderboard.

The new episode brings sub-zero tracks that are aiming to become a lot more engaging and fun. Angry Birds Go! now supports snapshots, which means you can see some awesome photos of yourself in action on the racetrack. Read more »

We have talked about the ISOCELL sensor in the Galaxy S5 in the past, but there are also other aspects of the phone’s camera that Samsung is intent on talking about.

One of them is real-time HDR feature. This lets you see the an HDR version of the image live on the viewfinder, even before you take the photo. This gives an idea of how the photo will look like, even before it is taken. Read more »

CyanogenMod added the HTC One (M8) to the lineup of devices which can boot its custom ROMs. Users of HTC’s flagship can now flash CM11 nightly builds from the CyanogenMod download page.

Nightly builds will be available on all versions of the HTC One (M8). Read more »