Yesterday we told you about Sony’s plans on lay off about 10,000 workers due to the expected $3.2 billion loss for the 2011 fiscal year. Unfortunately for Sony, however, now that we are coming closer to the final results being published, the expected loss has doubled to $6.4 billion.

The reason for this dark forecast turns out to be an unfortunate combination of not being able to defer taxes any longer and paying extra taxes because of shifting profits between subsidiaries. But Sony keeps its chin up. Read more »

A few days ago, RIM’s Vice President of Developer Relations Alec Saunders said on Twitter that RIM will be removing the ability to sideload apps on to the BlackBerry PlayBook for consumers. This was mainly being done to combat piracy and in Saunders’ own words because they “don’t want to duplicate the chaotic cesspool of Android market.”

Now, however, RIM is going back on its previous statement, with Saunders this time taking to the company’s blog and elaborating on what he said earlier on Twiiter while basically contradicting himself in the process. Read more »

The LTE sporting Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T could very well be one of the most important devices in the history of the Finnish company. Developed specifically with the lucrative U.S. market in mind, the Windows Phone handset will likely show the world if the marriage between Nokia and Microsoft is a success or, well… , you know what.

In terms of specifications, the newcomer does not differ a lot from its global sibling – the Nokia Lumia 800. Read more »

Instagram just received the biggest “like” in its two-year history, people. Facebook announced an agreement to acquire the wildly popular mobile photo sharing service today. The price which the social networking giant has agreed to pay for it is a cool $1 billion, which makes it the biggest Facebook acquisition to date.

The payment will be made in cash and shares. The Instagram crew, which consists of six people will join the social network’s workforce. Read more »

It isn’t secret to anyone that Facebook, with its more than 500 million active users is the undisputed social network champion, but this doesn’t stop Google from trying to keep up. The search engine giant reports a steady growth, reaching 61 million visits for March.

That’s an impressive 27% more than previous months and with Larry Page claiming 100 million active users, Google+ has grown a great deal since its launch in June last year. Read more »

According to reports, Apple has seeded a new iPhone to its internal testers. And before you get too excited, the exterior design hasn’t been revealed just yet. The only thing different is the chipset.

Yes, you are right. Predictably, Apple has put the A5X chip in the iPhone 4/4S body and has seeded it to testers in Cupertino. The variation of the A5X chip in question is the S5L8945X, which packs 1GB of RAM. Read more »

Lenovo just introduced the latest addition to its lineup of Android-powered tablets. The Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 runs on Ice Cream Sandwich and packs a 9.7″ 4:3 IPS LCD with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels (sound familiar?).

The IdeaTab packs a standard microUSB jack for charging and data transfers, while a microHDMI enables high-res TV-output. The on-board microSD card slot makes storage upgrades a breeze, while the four speakers at the back aim to deliver the best audio in the tablet world. Read more »

You may have seen 3D printers before, machines that can create complex 3D objects by melting plastic. What we have today is no different than that, except instead of plastic objects this machine prints out chocolates.

Yes, you read that right. This machine uses molten chocolate which it slowly places into layers into any 3D shape you want. You can see it in action in the video below. Read more »

The evolution of the phone and subsequently the smartphone has been wild and uncertain, remember features like push-to-talk, me neither. Such functionality never really sat right in the grand scheme of mobile telephony and with the Swiss army knife approach that app-capable phones now employ, calling is only a single piece of the overall experience.

That being said, despite all the improvements to data speeds for mobile web browsing, better camera functionality and improved email support, call enhancements haven’t really seen the same levels of care and attention, something that is now slowly changing, finally. Read more »

A leaked roadmap for the Tegra 4 has spilled some beans on Nvidia’s next generation mobile SoC. Assuming this image is authentic, we won’t have a Tegra 4 device with us before the first quarter of 2013, meaning Nvidia is not quite keeping up with its promise of delivering a new Tegra processor every year.

The first model to come out will be for flagship devices and will use the ARM Cortex A15 processor in the 4-PLUS-1 configuration and clocked at 1.8GHz. The next flagship processor will be out in Q3 and will take things up a notch by increasing the clock speed to 2.0GHz. Read more »

Microsoft’s controversial Smoked by Windows Phone challenge has now been extended till April 12. If you want to pit your smartphone against a Windows Phone, all you need to do is hop down to the nearest Microsoft store and if you win, you will get a $1,000 special edition Hunger Games laptop and a $1,000 gift card.

The Smoked by Windows Phone challenge recently came under fire after a Microsoft store denied a blogger his prize even after he won the competition fair and square. Eventually Microsoft stepped in and righted the wrong, giving the guy his laptop as well as a free Windows Phone, but the damage was done and a few things about the competition came to light, such as the way the Windows phones used in the test are already set to gain an advantage in that particular test and by profiling the competing handset and then avoiding tests in which the Windows Phone might end up on the losing side. Read more »

HTC bought a controlling share in Beats Electronics a while back and started bundling premium Beats headsets with some of their phones and incorporating audio know-how into the phones themselves. Now HTC might be rethinking the practice and there might not be any more Beats headsets to be found in HTC retail boxes.

An HTC product exec, Martin Fichter, talked to CNET and said that headphones aren’t a deciding factor when choosing a phone. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 should have been out by now, but Samsung recently decided to push back the launch to the end of this month. Pricing for the 10.1″ Ice Cream Sandwich tablet was never announced, but Office Depot may have let the cat out of the bag.

It has since been pulled down, but Office Depot put a $399 price tag on the 8GB model, which is a pretty low price for a new 10″ tablet. Read more »

Internal mapping has been in the mind of Google for some time, with the initial introduction of interior navigation making its first real appearance with Google Maps 6.0.

At the time you could use it to traverse places like airports, shopping centers and even your local IKEA, but navigating indoor spaces overall has remained relatively limited, something Google are attempting to rectify. Read more »

You probably remember that at its launch a few days back, Instagram for Android did not support tablets – a fact which left quite a few wannabe users frustrated. Well, folks, it took the photo sharing app’s developers only 3 days to fix that wrong.

The tablet support is not the only change which the update has brought to Instagram for Android. Read more »