Microsoft’s Scroogled campaign has been going on for a while now. For those not in the know, the Scroogled campaign aims to highlight some of the nefarious practices at Google, such as going through your mail to offer you relevant ads in Gmail.

The company has now released two new videos that now take potshots at the Android privacy issues. Through the two videos, Microsoft is highlighting how every time you purchase an app through the Google Play Store, your personal information, such as your full name, email and your address, is passed on through Google to the app developers, who may use it for malicious purposes. Of course, the underlying message here is that you really, really should be using Windows Phone and Bing. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is one of the most feature-rich smartphones around, and it duly packs a wide array of sensors. Samsung published an image that explains what each sensor does and what feature uses it.

There are the standard sensors that have been around since smartphones first appeared, like an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and proximity sensor. But then there are unusual sensors like a humidity sensor (used by S Health to calculate “comfort level”), and others. Read more »

Rightware, the developers of performance analysis and performance benchmarking tools have a launched Basemark X, a professional performance tool built on the Unity 4 real world gaming engine.

Basemark X allows you to evaluate cross platform comparisons of game graphics performance across Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 devices and is specifically designed to test ARM-based mobile processors. Read more »

Samsung is launching a new wave of teaser ads for the Samsung Galaxy S4 in the UK. The first one tells the S4 story in 60 seconds, running though the major features and qualities of the new flagship. All this is accompanied by orchestral music to spice things up.

If 60 seconds is too short for you, you can check out the earlier ad that runs over 4 minutes and goes into more detail. Read more »

Taiwanese-based Acer has joined a growing list of manufacturers allegedly working on an iPad Mini competitor. According to a report from DigiTimes, the rumored tablet will also compete against the likes of Google Nexus 7 in terms of pricing.

The upcoming tablet from Acer is said to sport a display from AU Optronics, which is manufactured by OEM Wistron. Read more »

Google expanded its Play Music service available to a new batch of countries – Austria, Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, and Portugal.This is the largest expansion Google has done to Play Music to date, making up the list of countries with access to the service to 12

People living there can now upload their existing music library as well as purchase new songs through the service and build up a library of up to 20,000 songs. Read more »

Google has just announced it’s launching an update for the Play Store for phones and tablets. The major feature of the new release is the refreshed user interface.

In the official Android blog, Google states that the main focus on the Play Store redesign is to allow users to find content more easily. To do so, there are now bigger images, new recommendations and faster checkout. Read more »

Six Disney games are now free on Android – Temple Run Brave, Where’s My Perry, Where’s My Water, Wreck It Ralph, It’s a Small World, and Puffle Launch. They were all previously priced at $0.99. Their iOS siblings are still paid apps.

Update: Disney got in touch with us and clarified that the sale was actually caused by a technical glitch in the Google Play Store and not an actual promotion. The issue has since been rectified and the games are back at their $0.99 price tags. The official statement follows:

There was a technical glitch on Google Play this morning that triggered the apps to be marked as free. The issue was corrected immediately and the prices are now back to normal for all of these titles (0.99$).

It’s unclear if this promotion is temporary, but according to the Google Play rules once an app goes free there is no turning back unless the developer deletes it and submits it again. Read more »

Twitter, the popular social networking website has updated its Android client and the app now offers a better tweeting experience.

The latest version of Twitter for Android comes with the fixes for the “Me” tab loading issues after the many complained about a bug, which did not allow them to access their DMs and switch between accounts. Read more »

Facebook announced its SNS-centric Home launcher and related software (like a new Messenger that also handles SMS) last week and will be releasing them to the Play Store on April 12. The most impatient Facebook addicts don’t have to wait that long though, as they can have a go at the new software today using leaked APKs that were ripped from an HTC First ROM.

For that you’ll need a phone that fits several requirements – a screen with no more than 1280 x 768 pixel resolution and no Facebook app installed. If Facebook is installed as part of your ROM, you’ll need to get rid of it for the APKs to work. Read more »

HTC is having a horrid time in the market and the company is losing ground very quickly. The company’s unaudited Q1 results shows 98% decline in its net profit and it looks like HTC is heading for another poor quarter.

The Taiwanese manufacturer’s hopes of turning the tables around, rely heavily on its One flagship smartphone and its marketing will be key. To make sure the smartphone gets enough exposure, HTC will be creating “HTC One Showrooms” in high-traffic malls across the United States. Read more »

There are only two smartphones out there to offer optical image stabilization – the Nokia Lumia 920 and the HTC One we recently met with.

The Lumia 920 employs floating lens technology for the OIS, while HTC One relies on sensor-shift stabilization. Naturally we were interested to find out which one does better and as luck would have we just got to see a real-life comparison of the two systems. Read more »

We got a peek at the upcoming Play Store 4.0 update a while back when the APK for the application got leaked out. Back then, however, while category and content pages were viewable, the home page for the app was unavailable.

Now thanks to this little leak by a YouTube employee, we can finally get a good look at this upcoming update for our Android devices. Read more »

The list of official Samsung Galaxy S4 accessories is impressive, but the one that got the most people interested, is the S View Cover.

Basically, the S View Cover is an upgraded version of the Flip Cover, which has a neat cut-out window that allows you to take a quick peek at your Galaxy S4 screen to see what’s new or to just check out the time. Sounds good on paper, but is it worth the $70 price tag? Follow us to find out. Read more »

There are big, complicated games, with guns, cars and explosions, missions to complete, stories to follow and characters to remember. Then there are simple games with just one objective where you have to do one thing over and over again till you get it right. PUK falls in that latter category.

In PUK, you hit larger circles with smaller circles before the time runs out. That’s basically all you do. But despite the simple premise, PUK is fiendishly addictive and one of the best games to have come out on mobile in recent times. Let’s see what makes it so good. Read more »