Apple promoted Jony Ive to a Chief Design Officer. The industrial designer’s brand new executive position has been newly created for him.
Jony Ive served as a Senior Vice President of Design over the past few years in Apple. He is credited with penning some of the Cupertino giant’s most successful products.
Popular quiz app QuizUp got a major update. The new version, available on iOS and Android, brings a new design. It also focuses more on the community and almost feels like a social networking app now.
You could always follow people through the app but now it shows you people around you, or in the same country or even the world who like the same topics as you and then you can add them and play against them. There is also a topic page for each topic where people can share stuff related to the topic and chat with other people.
In case you didn’t get a $130 Moto 360 smartwatch from Woot! because they were reconditioned, you can snag a new unit from Best Buy at $150.
As with the Woot! deal, this one is US only (sigh).
We have been hearing rumors of the Photos app in Android for a while now but Android Police finally has some solid information on it, including lots of screenshots.
As you may know, the current Photos app in Android is part of the Google+ app, and you need a Google account to use it. However, Google has been working on separating it from Google+ and making it a standalone gallery app (and service).
Instagram began sending out “Highlights” emails to its subscribers. The move is a bid by the now mature social network to keep its300 million users more involved.
The messages contain popular posts from the accounts one follows.
We already reviewed the 5.7″ Microsoft Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM and it turned out quite light on the battery and thus leading to an excellent endurance rating of 74 hours. That’s the reason we had high expectations for the smaller 5″ Lumia 640, which is based on the same Snapdragon 400 chipset.
The Lumia 640 LTE has a 5″ HD display, Snapdragon 400 SoC with 1GB of RAM, and is powered by a 2,500 mAh battery. It runs on the latest available Windows Phone 8.1 with Update 2 and Lumia Denim, just like the XL model.
DxOMark put HTC One M9 and its 20MP camera through the paces of its highly contested photography test. The Taiwanese manufacturer’s metal-clad flagship received the poor overall score of 69 (73 for still photography and 61 for video capture).
The result of HTC One M9 falls well behind the 86 points scored by the DxOMark leader, Samsung Galaxy S6 edge. The M9 shares 21st place with the Amazon Fire Phone and falls behind some decidedly devices such as Samsung Galaxy S III and iPhone 4s.
LG has definitely left its mark on the fairly new and still maturing smart wearable niche. The Korean tech giant is now on its third generation smartwatch and the whole wearable concept is really starting to take shape.
The LG Watch Urbane is a beautifully crafted gadget with a more sophisticated, even business-like demeanor. A single glance is enough to see that the Watch Urbane isn’t a fitness tracker and is definitely not sporty in any way. On the contrary, it looks like a watch you would want to couple with a good suit and wear to corporate meetings, a more grown-up and serious toy, if you may.
This week saw the announcement of Oppo’s pair of upper-midrangers, the R7 and R7 Plus, and we had a brief hands-on time with the phones to gather some initial impressions.
We’re now offering you a chance to have your say on the phones’ appeal by asking the usual question “Hot or not?”
Evernote is one software that will let you store images, numbers or text and make it available across devices and platforms. While there are other alternatives such as Google Keep or Apple Notes app, Microsoft is also testing a similar virtual clipboard internally.
Microsoft’s OneClip is a cross-platform clipboard app that allows to quickly copy pieces of data such as images, phone numbers or strings of text, then making it available immediately across different platforms.
The Yuphoria is the second device to be launched in India by YU, a division of Micromax made in collaboration with Cyanogen Inc. Yuphoria is an entry level smartphone, priced even lower than the Yureka that came before it.
Despite the entry level pricing, the Yuphoria does pack in a lot of features, including a metal body, 720p display, Snapdragon 410 processor, 2GB RAM, and 8 megapixel camera, not to mention Cyanogen OS 12 that comes out of the box. But all of that’s on paper. Let’s see what it’s like in the real world.
An update to Dropbox for Android gave the application a much deserved makeover. Version 2.6 brings the Android 5.0 Lollipop’s Material Design language to the cloud storage app.
The tabbed browsing interface of old has been replaced – users looking for files in photos and favorites will find them in the side menu.
O2 UK currently has an impressive promotion up for grabs. Two Windows Phone Lumia devices can be picked up with a £40 discount. One is the Nokia Lumia 930 and the other, the Lumia 735.
The offer only applies with a contract and brings the Lumia 930 down to £29.99 up front and £23.50 a month. The Lumia 735 is even cheaper with no initial payment and £14.50 per month. The deal can be picked up online, as well as at the carrier’s stores.
Looks like Snapchat is planning to enter into e-commerce business as the company has invested in Spring, a shopping app that was launched just last year, according to a Recode report. There is, however, no information on the size of the investment as well as whether or not it has closed.
Spring raised $25 million in funding last month, but that did not include Snapchat. However, Jello Labs – the company behind Spring – has an option to raise another $5.7 million in a fresh round, which is where the messaging app company might step in, the report notes.
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