Vanitas was a 16th and 17th century art style that served to remind people of the meaninglessness of earthly life and commonly depicted skulls. Art historians will be surprised to find the style reinterpreted as a luxury aftermarket customization of the iPhone 6, but here it is – the Mana Skull.
Only 50 will be made and use several thousand diamonds to depict a skull (with a police hat) and a yellow police line.
Panasonic has announced a new Micro Four Thirds mirrorless interchangeable lens camera called the G7. The main feature here is the 4K recording. You can record videos in 3840×2160 at up to 30fps or at 1080p at up to 60fps.
One new feature is the ability to extract 4K frames from your video and then save them as 8 megapixel still images. There are also three modes for shooting 4K burst images, one where you can press and hold the shutter as long as you want for 30fps burst mode, one where you can press once to initiate and once again to stop burst mode, and one where the camera records 60 frames before and after the shutter release.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple shelved its plans to build a 4K TV more than a year ago. Instead, the Cupertino giant will only launch an updated variant of its Apple TV set top box.
Apple has allegedly been exploring the possibility of entering the market for televisions for the past decade.
According to a report in 9to5Mac, there is a major Apple Watch update on the way. The new firmware is said to bring a number of connectivity and security enhancements.
A “Find my Watch” feature will arrive on Cupertino’s wearable device after the update.
The Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 we reported on earlier isn’t the only Samsung tablet to be receiving the Android Lollipop update today. It’s been joined by T-Mobile’s version of the Galaxy Tab S 10.5.
This was one of Samsung’s flagship tablets last year, and T-Mobile’s update comes less than a week after AT&T started seeding the same bits to its iteration of the device. Unlocked LTE-capable units have been running Lollipop since the beginning of April, on the other hand.
Samsung just keeps on pushing Android 5.0 Lollipop updates to more and more of its devices. Today’s lucky recipient of the latest tasty treat is the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 LTE tablet, the huge device that was launched last year.
The update will take it to Android 5.0.2, and it’s currently available only in Switzerland, for units sold unlocked. You can apply it through Kies, Samsung’s desktop software, or wait for the over-the-air rollout to reach you. Remember that Samsung likes to release such updates in certain countries first, and if everything goes to plan then the software is pushed to other territories afterwards.
MediaTek continues its push to become the Qualcomm of the East, the latest step in that direction is fast battery charging for mobiles. The tech is called Pump Express Plus and is found in the MT6732 and MT6595 chipsets, along with newer chips that come out.
There are current devices that use those chipsets (like the Sony Xperia E4g and Meizu MX4), but it seems they are not Pump-enabled.
Samsung’s tight collaboration with Marvel has been going strong ever since the two companies teamed up in June last year. The partnership has been mostly on the media front and the two smartphones did have a prominent place in Marvel’s latest Avengers: Age of Ultron movie.
It comes as no surprise that, on the flip side of the deal, we will be seeing a lot of Avengers-themed merchandise from Samsung. The Korean tech giant has already started teasing some of these products, including TouchWiz themes and a limited edition Galaxy S6 edge series, starting with an Iron Man edition and probably more superhero skins yet to come.
Samsung announced the launch of the Blue Topaz Galaxy S6 and the Emerald Green Galaxy S6 edge. Previously, the flagship smartphones were only available in white, black, and gold.
The two eye-grabbing color schemes were announced during the launch of the two devices.
We had been following closely the developments around the Oppo R1x, which was announced all the way back in January as R1C, bound for the Chinese market. The X replaced the C for the global version and the smartphone was on the roadmap for a release in April, though it still remains hard to find in online stores.
We managed to get our hands on a review unit only a couple of days ago and we’ll be doing our typical routine over the following weeks. However, a quick hands-on report was in order, which you can read here.
Microsoft Lumia 640 XL turned out quite capable device even though it is running on the modest Snapdragon 400 chipset. The XL flavor packs a big 5.7″ IPS display with ClearBlack technology, there is a snappy 13MP ZEISS camera, plus a beefy 3,000 mAh battery. We had high expectations for the battery life and the Lumia 640 XL lived up to them.
We had the 3G dual SIM version of the Lumia 640 XL, which supports dual-standby where one of the SIMs is hooked on a 3G network, while the other works on GSM mode. There is a LTE-capable dual SIM version, as well as 3G and LTE single-SIM editions.
Last week, we asked you, what your material of choice is for a new flagship phone. We were quite interested to see what you, or loyal readers, regarded as most-premium and we definitely got a resounding answer – metal, metal, metal all the way!
It seems that when you talk of a shiny new device, most of you really picture a slick metal exterior and we definitely understand the allure. It was also quite interesting to read through the comments and see your thoughts on the matter. There were some really good points made.
We’ve had the Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet for review over the previous few weeks, and in case you missed that, you can find it here. Alongside the slate Sony announced the BKB50 snap-on keyboard dock which turns the the device into a compact Android ultrabook.
We received that one too, and got to spend a little quality time with it. You can read our impressions after the break.
In what could be a severe blow to companies like Google, mobile operators in Europe are planning to filter out advertisements on their networks, according to a Financial Times report.
As per the report, one unnamed carrier has already installed an ad blocking software, which is developed by Israeli startup Shine, and plans to activate it by the end of 2015. “Tens of millions of mobile subscribers around the world will be opting in to ad blocking by the end of the year,” said Roi Carthy, chief marketing officer of Shine.
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