Benchmarks are a big part of our reviews and Basemark X is one of the newer ones we’re using. The company behind it, Rightware, just announced that it has covered all three major smartphone OSes, which is a must-have for inter-platform comparisons.

The latest version, Basemark X 1.1, is based on Unity 4.2, a popular game engine and IDE. Read more »

Rumors indicate that this month’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona could see more than one announcement from Samsung.

Besides the anticipated Galaxy S5 flagship, sources indicate that new editions of their popular Galaxy Tab series of tablets and Galaxy Gear smartwatch could get announced. Read more »

Over the last few hours Rovio has released three teasers about a new Angry Birds game. The pictures are very clear – they even have the #NEWANGRYBIRDS hashtag in the corner, so it isn’t just another update.

There is no other information but the teaser pictures, which show popular birds watching something in the distance. There is the Stella logo plus the “Best Friends Forever…Most of the Time” message. Read more »

HTC launched customizable Double Dip cases for its HTC One flagship. The protective cases are split into three parts and you can customize the color of each one.

Just to be clear, those are cases – HTC isn’t painting the One in wildly different colors, like Motorola does with the Moto X. Read more »

Google will soon start rolling out v5.4 of the Google Play Music app for Android and it brings with it several useful changes. One of them is the addition of offline radio feature that lets you cache radio stations within the app for offline playback. Just choose the ‘Keep on device’ option for a station to save it on to your device.

The Play Music app will also let you manage all your associated devices. The online service has a limit of 10 devices and to add more you need to deauthorize old ones, which previously had to be done through the web interface but can now be done from within the app itself. Read more »

Mozilla has announced plans on further monetizing the Firefox desktop browser, and this involves adding sponsored content through a feature called Directory Tiles. This feature will suggest sponsored content to new users after they install the browser.

Currently, the new tab page on a freshly installed Firefox shows blank tiles on the New Tab page (as seen above), which eventually get populated by your frequently browsed websites. What Directory Tiles will do is instead of showing blank tiles, it will show you content from Mozilla ecosystem, popular websites from your geographic location and sponsored content from selected Mozilla partners. The sponsored content will be explicitly marked as such so you know what you’re clicking on. Read more »

According to a report in The Verge, Microsoft is considering bringing support for Android applications to Windows and Windows Phone. Planning for the radical move is said to be ongoing and in early stages.

If materialized, the shift in strategy will aim to counter the lack of popular apps available on Microsoft’s OS platforms. Despite featuring mainstream titles such as Flipboard and Instagram, Windows Phone still lacks many of the popular iOS and Android apps and games. Read more »

We’ve seen the HTC M8 (the HTC One’s successor) star in plenty of leaks but they all have something in common – low quality photos. XDA-Developers user hamdir collected all leaked photos and created beautiful renders of the M8.

Some of the things are dubious – like the second camera. The images that showed it were called out as fakes by an HTC regional director, but there are plenty of leaked images that feature a second opening above the camera (including back covers). Read more »

Terry Cavanagh, creator of the ridiculously difficult and addictive Super Hexagon, has created a Flash-based fan game called Maverick Bird as a tribute to Flappy Bird, which after a bout of tremendous popularity, was pulled off the stores by the developer.

Since this is the developer of Super Hexagon we are talking about here, the game features the same flashing colors and basic geometric shapes, bass-heavy EDM and a steep learning curve. In fact, this game is even more difficult than Flappy Bird, and that’s saying something. Read more »

Samsung said it will be trying hard to expand its tablet market share in 2014 and it shows. The company already released a quartet of Galaxy Tab Pro tablets and the ultra low-end Galaxy Tab 3 Lite 7.0 and now we learn that a trio of fourth generation Galaxy Tab slates will be joining them shortly.

The Galaxy Tab 4 slates will bring quad-core 1.2 GHz processors to the series, better cameras and Android 4.4 KitKat and will come in three sizes – 7.0, 8.0 and 10.1. All three new slates will feature TFT displays of the modest 1280×800 pixels resolution. The connectivity departments will include Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, GPS with GLONASS a microSD card slot and an optional 3G/LTE radio. All new slates will come with Samsung’s premium Hancom Office, E-Meeting and WebEx services plus the Remote PC app preinstalled. Read more »

Verizon will start offering the Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition slate soon. A leaked official picture, courtesy of @evleaks, show the black version with embedded Verizon and its 4G LTE logos on the faux-leather plastic back.

Naturally, Verizon will be offering the LTE-enabled version powered by the Snapdragon 800 chipset. Read more »

Canon has announced the new EOS 1200D DSLR (also known as Rebel T5 in the US), their latest entry-level DSLR that replaces the previous 1100D. Just like the 1100D, the 1200D is aimed at first time DSLR buyers and tries to dumb things down considerably by focusing on easy to use presets and simple menus.

The 1200D uses an 18 megapixel CMOS APS-C sensor and DIGIC-4 processor. It has an ISO range of 100-6400 (expandable to 12800) and a nine-point auto focus system. You can shoot images in burst mode at 3fps or a 1080p video at 30fps. Read more »

Canon has announced the new PowerShot G1 X Mark II digital camera, the latest in their series of G-series cameras that are high-end point-and-shoot cameras for those who are a bit more serious about photography. The G1 X Mark II has new optics and sensor along with connectivity options such as NFC and Wi-Fi.

Inside the G1 X Mark II is a new 1.5-inch, 12.8 megapixel 3:2 aspect ratio CMOS sensor, which is way bigger than what you get in most point-and-shoot cameras, and even bigger than the 1-inch sensor in Sony’s excellent RX100 II. Read more »

Sony has announced the replacement of its popular NEX-6 mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. The new a6000 has got a 24MP APS-C sized sensor (up from 16MP on the NEX-6) and brand new Hybrid AF system, which combines the best of the both worlds of phase-detection and contrast-detection auto focus systems. The faster phase-detect points now cover 92% of the frame and provide for what Sony calls “the world’s fastest autofocus”.

But that’s not all, as the Sony a6000 can shoot up to 11fps – and that’s with tracking continuous autofocus turned on. Read more »

It’s worth mentioning that the bottle of water will cost the same price as the MP3 player.

Sony’s W Series Walkman MP3 player has an interesting marketing tool that highlights its waterproof nature: Sony has decided to package it in a bottle of water. Read more »