Twitter started its own Google Play beta testing campaign and now the handful of people that registered for the early beta releases on Google+ (now closed) can get to experience the latest version of its Android app.

The latest release – Twitter 5.0 beta for Android brings a significant (and welcome) UI overhaul that changes the fixed clickable tabs for swipeable ones that you can rearrange through the side-accessible menu. Read more »

Sony is trying to bring out your inner Gordon Ramsey with a special edition of the Xperia Tablet Z – the Kitchen Edition. Yep, you read that right – the water-resistant tablet isn’t afraid of the kitchen environment that usually holds many dangers for an electronic device.

So, what sets the Xperia Tablet Z Kitchen Edition from the regular edition? Read more »

Most electronic devices are abandoned due to a fault that is usually the result of one component going bad. This results in a lot of electronic waste full of devices that are otherwise fully functional save for one or two failed components. So what if you had a phone where you could just replace one component if it goes bad? Or build a phone with just the components you want?

This is what the Phonebloks concept is all about. Conceptualized by Dave Hakkens, Phonebloks is a completely modular mobile phone, where every part such as the display, speaker, camera, battery, etc. are modules that plug into a board and you can remove and replace them as you desire. Read more »

We have been seeing bits and pieces of Nokia’s alleged Windows RT tablet for a while now. Windows expert Paul Thurott now has what looks like a press image of this unnamed Nokia tablet that is scheduled to be announced later this month.

The Nokia tablet will have a 10-inch 1080p display, a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 6.7 megapixel camera and a $499 price tag. As mentioned before, this tablet will be running on Windows RT and not the full blown Windows 8, which is a cause for concern. Read more »

Gameloft announced on Twitter that their popular new racing game, Asphalt 8: Airborne, will go free on iOS over the weekend. The game is usually priced at $0.99 on both the App Store as well as the Play Store.

Airborne is the latest in the long line of Asphalt games for mobile devices. We reviewed the game recently but were less than blown away by it, due to the aggressive difficulty, expensive IAP options and performance issues on Android. It is still a decent game overall for the price and now that it is being made available for free on iOS, it’s definitely worth a download. Read more »

Tablet shipments are set to surpass their PC counterparts in the last quarter of this year according to IDC. PC shipments will still be greater than the tablet ones for the year, though the future belongs to the slate army according to International Data Corporation.

According to IDC, tablet shipments will surpass total PC shipments on annual basis by the end of 2015 (PC shipments include desktop and portables combined). Read more »

Intel has been trying to get into the mobile business and has had moderate success so far, but with the new Bay Trail chipset the chip giant may have finally done it. Bay Trail chips will use the new Silvermont CPU cores and Intel’s own GPUs like the ones used in Haswell processors.

Bay Trail will be under the Atom brand for tablets (Z3600 for dual-core CPUs, Z3700 for quad-core) and Celeron and Pentium for laptops (N2000 and N3000 respectively) and desktops (J1000 and J2000). Read more »

Google has announced that ASUS and Toshiba have jumped on the Chrome OS bandwagon. The two companies join Samsung, Acer, HP and Lenovo to make a total of six manufacturers who have turned their attention to Google’s infant computer OS.

Additionally, new laptops boasting Haswell CPUs are out as well. ASUS has debuted on the Chrome OS scene with its own Chromebox, while Toshiba has a Chromebook. Acer and HP have updated their Chromebook and Chromebook14 laptops with Haswell chips as well. Read more »

Yesterday at the ASUS IDF press conference CEO Jerry Shen announced the company’s first tablet to run on Intel’s Bay Trail platform. It is called the ASUS Transformer Book T100 and is an entry-level 10.1″ tablet running the Windows 8.1 operating system.

The 10.1″ display is of the IPS variety and has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, which is rather mediocre for a display of such size . Read more »

Jimmy Kimmel’s show likes to humor the ordinary user’s ignorance from time to time and show it for everyone to see. Just like the show did last year when the iPhone 5 was unveiled – asking people on the street if they like the new iPhone when they actually got to try an iPhone 4 (not even a 4S).

This year Jimmy Kimmel’s show decided to step things up and inquired people how they feel about the iPhone 5s while handing them an, wait for it, iPad mini. Read more »

You may remember Google acquired the team that built the Snapseed application for iOS a few months ago. Although we did see a version of Snapseed for Android we didn’t hear much from them ever since. That is until now.

Google has now integrated some of the photo editing features of the Snapseed app into Google+. You can now open your photos on Google+ and go into the new Edit option available on top. This brings up some familiar options you may have seen in the Snapseed app on the side. Read more »

Following the successful treatment it gave the original, DODOcase launched its line of locally handcrafted covers for the 2013 ASUS Nexus 7. The San-Francisco based designer and maker of bookbound cases has an entire collection on offer for the second generation of the most popular slate in the Android realm.

I managed to spend some quality time with the DODOcase Color Block for the new Nexus 7. Inspired by the artist journals from the past, the cover offers a fresh take with a classic twist on the tablet case concept. Read more »

Lenovo is still dead set on delivering capable notebooks to market, despite crushing the handheld sales boards recently. After bringing a new range of ThinkPads prior to this year’s IFA and delivering the uber high-res Yoga 2 Pro ultrabook the company has decided to bump its existing lineup with the latest Intel chips from the Haswell series.

The series getting the update are the ThinkPad T, W, L and E. The higher-end of the bunch is the W540, moving down the T440P, T540P and the L440, L540 and E440, E540 laptops. All but the E series laptops will feature 4G connectivity as well. Read more »

While the launch of the new Sony Xperia Z1 flagship is still a week away in most markets, some enthusiastic early developers in China have already figured out a way to gain root access to the device.

The process is surprisingly simple and involves using the tool found at 360-Root, connecting your Xperia Z1 via USB, and clicking the ‘Root’ button. The tool is all in Chinese, but you can’t really get it wrong. Read more »

Three companies, three approaches to the “best camera” – Nokia uses a huge sensors with a staggering amount of pixels, HTC used fewer, but bigger pixels and Sony settled for something in between. So, how did it work out for the Japanese company?

A shootout coming from Vietnam tries to provide an answer by pitting Sony’s new hotness, the Xperia Z1, against the Nokia 808 PureView and the HTC One mini. Read more »