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 »

The Nokia Lumia 1320 is considered the cheap man’s Lumia 1520, but that doesn’t make it less important than its high-end sibling. In fact, recently it was exactly Nokia’s more affordable devices that have been moving its business forward. Okay, technically, it’s now Microsoft’s business, but let’s stay on topic.

At the front, the Lumia 1320 boasts a 720p 6″ IPS ClearBlack display. It’s bright and boasts great colors, but you can notice that it’s not as sharp as the Lumia 1520′s equally-sized, but higher resolution screen. The cutback is understandable though, Nokia needs a mid-range runner who can quickly catch up to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3. Read more »

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 »

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 »

Android OS provides mechanisms for push notifications that leverage two services from Google and apps like Gmail, Facebook and Twitter use it to deliver instantaneous notifications. The problem is that those services infringe on patents held by SimpleAir, an “inventor-owned technology licensing company.”

A jury in Marshall, Texas unanimously found that the patent in question, No. 7,035,914, is valid and that the search giant infringed upon five of the claims in the patent. Read more »

Around this time last year, Sony enabled magnetic charging of its smart devices via pogo pins starting with its Xperia Z flagship.

Charging dock solutions have since been outed for several Sony smartphones since, with a newly leaked model, the DK36, being poised to serve an as-yet unannounced Xperia flagship. Read more »

Last year, Nokia unveiled the HERE Transit Beta app available for select touch-based Ashas, specifically the ones of the Asha 50x range, and now the time has come the app to graduate to final form and hit the Nokia Store.

Currently, only the Nokia Asha 500, Asha 501, Asha 502 and Asha 503 have access to download the HERE Transit app. Read more »

Thanks to some images that popped up over in Russian leakster WZor we get a glimpse of what Microsoft is working on for the first update to Windows 8.1.

In said leaked shots we see metro apps (in this case the Store) pinned on the taskbar in Windows 8.1 update 1 Desktop mode. An option dubbed ‘Show Store apps on the taskbar’ seems the likely culprit here – pictures after the break. Read more »

The Nintendo Wii U got its price significantly cut on Amazon UK and Argos following the company’s financial report, which revealed catastrophic sale figures.

The 32GB Wii U Premium Pack now costs &pound,180 slashed from £300. The significant price cut means that Nintendo is selling the console on a thinner margin and perhaps even at loss, hoping to make some money back from increased game sales. Read more »

The latest State of Mobile Advertising coming from browser-maker Opera shows that while Android leads iOS in terms of browsing on smartphones 36% to 29% and when factoring in tablets, where Apple’s iPad is dominant the numbers are 38% for Android and 43% for Apple. Android is bringing in 32% of Opera revenues, while iOS churns in a massive 56%.

The numbers show that mobile ads are much more valuable on iOS devices. The numbers come from Opera’s Mediaworks, which serves over 60 billion monthly page impressions to some 425 million users. Read more »

Capcom has released a remastered version of the popular Resident Evil 4 game for the PC. The new version features improved visuals with widescreen support and sharpened text and textures and runs at HD resolution at 60fps.

Resident Evil 4 first debuted on the GameCube back in 2005 and was later ported over to the PS2. Both version received a lot of praise from critics, making it one of the top rated games in history. The game was later ported over to the PC back in 2007 but poor visuals and terrible controls made the game nearly unplayable. Read more »

Sony took the wraps off a Wi-Fi-only Xperia Z Ultra in Japan. The previously leaked compact tablet will hit the shelves in its homeland this Friday, on January 24.

The ultra-thin slate is priced at ¥52,000 (about $499). Read more »

The latest and greatest amongst the Asha lineup – the Asha 503 – has recently arrived at our office. As usual we unboxed it in front of a camera and then shot a short user interface walkthrough.

The Asha 503 introduces 3G connectivity to the series, while inheriting Asha 502′s 5MP camera with a LED flash. It also comes in a brand new glass-imitating shell, which is actually the familiar Asha design covered with an additional transparent layer of glossy plastic. Read more »

Morgan Stanley analyst, Katy Huberty predicts that 54-55 million iPhones have been sold in Q4 2013. If this is the case, then the iPhone could have very well had a record quarter.

The consensus on Wall Street is that Apple was able to move 53 million units of their popular smartphone; a slightly lower, but still overwhelmingly impressive number. Read more »

It looks like the US’ largest mobile carrier just got even larger: Verizon has reported that in the fourth quarter of 2013, they’ve added an impressive 1.7 million new customers to their service roster. This brings their total number of customers to a whopping 102.8 million.

Additionally, last year Verizon expanded its LTE network to cover pretty much all of its 3G network coverage area (over 99%, in fact) and bought back Vodafone’s 45 percent share of the company, so they’ve had a pretty busy year. Read more »