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Samsung and Phones 4U partner to launch 15 stores in the UK

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Samsung continues its rapid European retail expansion, adding 15 new retail stores in the UK. Today, the company announced it has struck a deal with UK retailer Phones 4U to manage 15 Samsung stores in the country.

Just last week, the Koreans announced a similar partnership with Phones 4U rival Carphone Warehouse, which includes 60 Samsung stores in Europe, 20 of which will operate in the UK.

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Check out Apple’s 30 year anniversary video shot on 100 iPhones

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January 14th, 2014 marked Apple’s 30th year in business. To commemorate this milestone, the Cupertino based tech giant released a celebratory video shot in one day on 100 iPhones.

Teams of cinematographers, under the guidance of director Jake Scott, were equipped with 100 iPhones and given one day to capture all of the footage. The result is very impressive. Read more »

How much did Google actually lose from Motorola

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As a refresher – Lenovo bought Motorola Mobility from Google for $2.91 billion yesterday, which would make it around two and a half years since Google bought Moto for $12.5 billion in 2011.

So by using simple math, you get that Google has lost some $9.6 billion in that span right, only getting a rich patent portfolio to show for it? Adding the money Motorola drained from Google on a quarterly basis the figure is even over $10 cool billion. Well, not exactly. Some analysts are estimating the figure to be only half as big. Here are the numbers. Read more »

The maker of gyroscopic OIS for Nokia makes the component available to other manufacturers

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According to a report in The Register, Nokia’s highly-effective gyroscopic OIS tech has become available to other manufacturers on the open market. The tiny part made by ST Microelectronics was previously exclusively available to the Finnish manufacturer.

The dual-axis gyroscope for image stabilization carries the model number L2G2IS. Read more »

Chrome and Lego team up to build brick creations online

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Love Legos, but hate stepping on a brick in the middle of the night, dealing with misplaced pieces, or having to clean up after an intense miniature engineering session?

Well Chrome has teamed up with the beloved toymaker to create a web application, Build with Chrome. The app allows you to play with Legos right in your browser. Read more »

Samsung to open 60 stores across Europe in three months

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Samsung has chosen Carphone Warehouse as a “preferred partner” for Europe. The retailer will collaborate with Samsung to open and manage over 60 dedicated stores of the Korean company.

Carphone Warehouse is already managing the three pilot stores and it seems Samsung is happy with the results and has decided on an aggressive expansion. Read more »

Samsung announces devices with 4K displays are on the way

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The Mobile World Conference is fast approaching, and Samsung has some titillating news about the displays on their future devices.

The Korean Manufacturer mentioned that they’re preparing a smartphone with a QHD AMOLED screen (2560 x 1440 resolution). Some believe that this will be the display on the Galaxy S5, but it’s all speculation at this point. Their other announcement is what’s really intriguing, however. Read more »

Sony will unveil its “slimmest” Playstation ever on Jan. 30th

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Sony has a history of releasing bite-sized iterations of their popular gaming consoles that perform better, are quieter, and consume less power. So when the Japanese hardware manufacturer announced it will reveal its “slimmest” Playstation device ever, one might assume that they would announce a trimmed down Playstation 3.

However, this might not entirely be the case, as there have been some rumors that Sony is gearing up for a wider launch of their Playstation Vita TV. Read more »

Microsoft sold 3.9 million Xbox One units and doubled its Surface sales in 2013

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Microsoft has announced its earnings report for the fourth quarter and the company has managed to better its performance from the previous year. The company has racked up a record $24.52 billion in revenue in 2013 as compared to the $21.5 billion in 2012.

The gross margin read $16.24 billion, while the operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share read $7.97 billion, $6.56 billion and $0.78 per share, respectively. Read more »

Google’s Street View car goes around the Top Gear track

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Google and BBC have teamed up for a little reasonably-priced car challenge at Top Gear’s track – the Dunsfold Aerodrome. The project involved the most popular tame racing driver, the Stig, and the Street View Opel (that’s Continental Europe for Vauxhall) Astra.

Aside from the standard Street View walkthrough of the famous track there’s also a video of the Street View car and a rampant Mercedes SLS AMG driven by the Stig going alongside it. Read more »

Snapchat gets security update, is swiftly hacked

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Well that was quick. An hour after Snapchat’s new security update was seeded to the public, it was succinctly hacked in under an hour.

The popular ghost-messaging service has come under fire recently after 4.6 million Snapchat users’ data was disseminated online due to a security vulnerability in Snapchat’s software. Read more »

eBay announces great 2013 fiscal results, mobile becomes a major factor

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eBay had a good final quarter in 2013 to round off a great year – revenue grew 19% both for Q4 and for the whole year, reaching $6.6 billion. Both eBay and PayPal reached record results from mobile, which was one of the major drivers of growth.

For the fourth quarter of last year net income was $850 million with an operating margin of 22.6%, up 0.7 percentage points compared to Q4 the year before. Read more »

Microsoft allows foreign users’ data to be housed out of US

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With all of the hubbub surrounding the NSA and its many scandals, Microsoft preempted a lot of their foreign customers’ fears and have announced that they’re allowing their users’ data to be housed outside of the US.

The Financial Times reported on the unprecedented move. Most US-based tech companies, like Google, are refusing to comply with other countries requests to allow their citizens’ data to be stored domestically. This is why Microsoft’s move is kind of a big deal. Read more »

Apple may have sold 25 million iPads last quarter

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Munster consensus numbers indicate that Apple could have moved 24-25 million iPad units in Q4 2013. These numbers gain more credence when you consider that Fortune magazine echoed pretty much the same figures.

Many analysts believe that Apple could have sold even more iPads had it not been for the shortage of retina displays for the iPad mini. Couple this with the fact that the iPad air didn’t hit shelves until November 1st, and we could continue to see strong iPad sales even throughout Q1 2014. Read more »

Nexus 4 can rock the Sailfish OS

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Jolla’s Sailfish OS is new, intuitive, and interesting. We gave a preview of the OS’ features a while back and even though we like it, it’s no secret that it will be challenging for Sailfish to gain momentum in a market that is already dominated by well-established operating system’s like iOS and Android.

However, if you have a Nexus 4 (or presumably any other Android phone with an unlocked Bootloader), then you can try out Sailfish without having to fork over your hard-earned cash for an entirely new device. You can see a video of Jolla’s OS in action on a Nexus 4 after the jump. Read more »