Over the past few years microSD card manufacturers have mostly focused on increasing the capacity, rather than improving the speed, but as mobile chipsets improve, things are obviously starting to change. Samsung just announced that it has begun mass production of its first UHS-I microSD cards, which should deliver a significant increase in performance, compared to their regular counterparts.
The new 16GB memory cards come with a 20nm 64Gb chip with toggle DDR 2.0 support and an advanced Samsung controller, which enables it to achieve a maximum read speed of up to 80MB/s. That’s a quadruple increase compared to its predecessors, but naturally you’d need an UHS-I compatible device to enjoy it. Read more »
File it in under unlikely to happen soon, but the Project Glass that Google just unveiled is one of the most exciting pieces of technology we have seen recently. Started by a group of Google employees, the project aims to make organizing your daily routines and sharing stuff with your friends as easier than it has even been.
Forget about using smartphones – all you need is a futuristic looking band on your head, your voice and Internet connectivity. We’ll let the following video do the rest of the talking as we don’t think words can do the promised experience justice. Read more »
Google is busy building up its movie catalog for YouTube and Google Play Movies, with Paramount joining in, making for a total of five out six major Hollywood studios (plus 10 independent ones). The catalog has swelled to almost 9,000 titles now.
The deal with Paramount will make 500 new titles available for rent through YouTube or if you’re on an Android device, through Google Play Movies. Read more »
Developers TouchType Ltd. have spawned another version of their popular and award-winning SwiftKey keyboard for Android. The version 3, which is still in beta, has now been released for its VIP community members in smartphone and tablet versions.
So what’s so great about this new version? For starters, the keyboard has now been optimized for Ice Cream Sandwich and comes with new themes that go with the Holo theme on ICS. The layout has been changed a bit and you will notice that the Space key is a lot bigger now, making it an easier target while typing quickly. Read more »
Panasonic has officially announced the LUMIX GF5 camera, which just like the other GF-series cameras that came before it, belongs to the Micro Four Thirds category. This compact, mirror-less camera comes with a new 12.1 megapixel Live MOS sensor and a redesigned Venus Engine processor. The GF5 is capable of shooting in sensitivities as high as ISO 12,800.
The LUMIX GF5 uses a sensor-based Contrast AF, which is said to be more accurate than Phase difference AF systems. It also offers full-area focusing, so you can set the auto focus at any point in the field of view instead of relying on pre-set points as seen on DSLRs. Read more »
The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 came by our office today and unlike its smaller namesake, left no doubts about its tablet nature. But it’s not just any tablet – the S Pen stylus proved to be very versatile and surprised us with its extensive functionality.
On the outside, the Note 10.1 may look quite similar to the Samsung’s other 10.1″ tablet – the Tab 2 10.1 – but there’s just enough difference to make the Note 10.1 the more desirable tablet. Read more »
Don’t you just love competition? While Dropbox is still the most popular public cloud storage provider, the heat that it’s feeling from the competition (most notably the upcoming Google Drive) is forcing it to improve its service quite rapidly.
Today, the company announced it’s doubling the referral bonus and upping the maximum allowable free storage limit. From now on you’ll be getting half a gigabyte of extra free space for each of your friends that you manage to convince to start using Dropbox (note that they’ll get half a gig too) and you’ll be able to use those bonuses for obtaining up to 16GB of free storage. Read more »
When Samsung announced the Galaxy Tab 2 range, which includes the 7-inch and the 10.1-inch models, the launch date was pegged sometime last week, at least in the UK.
As is obvious, the two products did not make it within the promised launch but now we know the reason why. A Samsung spokesperson told Computerworld that the reason that the launch of the two tablets has been delayed is due to Samsung taking its time working on Android 4.0, presumably implementing its TouchWiz UI on top. Read more »
Yesterday, Sony issued a firmware update for the PS Vita, which took the version number to 1.65. Among the list of changes included ability to disable certain notifications, such as when friends sign in, messages are received, etc., ability to set the auto standby timer to ‘After 10 Minutes’, arrow for indicating when new activities are available in LiveArea, and the inclusion of Caps Lock for the on-screen keypad.
However, it seems there was some issue with this update, due to which Sony had to pull it down shortly after it went live. Read more »
In case you are not one of the 430K+ people who were on the Android waiting list, we have some good news for you. Instagram for Android is now available for download – less than a month after it was given a “coming very soon” status from its founders.
Any Android smartphone, sporting a camera and OS version 2.2 and higher is welcome join the photo sharing party. Read more »
Apple is on its way to becoming the world’s first company to be worth over a trillion dollars, expects analyst Gene Munster from Piper Jaffray. The firm sees Apple shares reaching the $1,000 mark in the quite near future – by 2014 to be specific.
Munster believes the huge success will be driven by the strong iPhone sales. According to him, at least 70% of all people who owned an iPhone for two years will choose to renew their iPhone ownership. Read more »
Since we got our hands on the Galaxy Tab 7.7 we were eager to do our battery tests. We were pretty curious to find how the first Super AMOLED Plus-touting display fares, compared to its LCD rivals. Coming with a 5100mAh battery the Tab 7.7 has a theoretical advantage over the 7-inch Samsung slates, but it also has a larger screen with more pixels to power.
So, we did what we usually do – 3G talk, web browsing and video playback tests and we are now ready to share the results with you. Read more »
Sony Ericsson is a pretty big name in tennis – the Sony Ericsson Open just finished and it is a title sponsor of the Women’s Tennis Association. So, it came as a big surprise when it was announced that Maria Sharapova will promote Samsung products from now on (she was a Sony Ericsson ambassador for 4 years).
Currently, her deal covers only Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States and is for three years. A new deal that covers the rest of the world might be signed next year. Read more »
The phone industry has made numerous attempts to create a ladies’ phone, but most of them proved unsuccessful. The reason is probably that those phones tended to offer dated hardware at high prices, falsely presuming that women wouldn’t care about smooth performance, apps etc.
What if we told you that you can convert a regular iPhone 4 or 4S into something the ladies will like? All it takes is some screwdriver skills, a $10 tool kit and a $50 replacement back. Read more »
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