Google Maps just added support for the Nintendo Entertainment System, people. And yes, that’s the same 8-bit gaming console, which is soon going to celebrate its thirtieth birthday.
Of course, it is an April Fool’s prank, brought our way by Google.
At a time when creativity in advertising gets bolder by the hour, impressive commercials have become tough to come by. HTC however, have managed to pull one off. The company’s One X flagship commercial was shot at an altitude of 12,000 feet, with the smartphone doing fashion photography in the process.
The commercial has taken the impressive 35 skydives to be completed.
Meizu MX and M9 owners, rejoice, for Meizu has launched its official beta update to Ice Cream Sandwich for you.
After just a month of beta testing, the Ice Cream Sandwich public beta release is live and Meizu urges the MX and M9 users to give it a go.
When HTC announced their One X flagship smartphone at the MWC in February, it made a pretty big deal of its camera. A couple of the features that got most attention were its ability to shoot 4 full-resolution frames per second up to 99 shots and go from locked stat to taking a picture in just 0.7 seconds.
There’s no denying this sounds impressive, but experience has thought us to take PR talk a pinch of salt and believe nothing until it’s properly tested. Luckily, tech blog SoyaCincau helped us with that, pitting the One X camera against those of the Sony Xperia S and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and filming the whole thing. Their findings were quite interesting, so we suggest you check them out.
There’s no arguing the Samsung I8530 Galaxy Beam is a pretty unique smartphone. In short, it’s a Galaxy R with a twist – a dual-core Android Gingerbread phone, with a 4.0 WVGA LCD screen and a 5MP camera. What turns heads though is the built-in projector – the Galaxy Beam is a pocketable movie theater or business presentation, depending on your needs.
We had some time to play with the Galaxy Beam and, as you could imagine, we dedicated most of it on the projector.
After touching our techie brains with the video on how much effort is put into the production of the One S, now HTC wants to touch our hearts with their latest One X ad video.
The inspiring video, despite not showing the One X all that often, makes you feel a bit more special than usual. But will that help HTC boost the sales of their hotly launched One line-up? Check the video out and decide for yourselves.
One of the most popular alternatives to the Google Play Store, the Amazon Appstore just got an update, bringing its version number to 2.3. Raising the initial download file size cap from 20MB to 50MB, the Amazon Appstore now matches what the original Android app repository has to offer.
Unfortunately, the Amazon store still has no support for secondary downloads – a feature which allows the Play Store to host apps up to 4GB in total size. On the other hand, the update finally solves the issue, where update notifications will pop up even if you have disabled the feature.
Google has obviously been hard at work ever since rumors leaked a while back about its upcoming cloud storage service, Drive.
A leaked screenshot has confirmed that the new service will feature a whopping 5GB of free storage for everyone.
The latest firmware update has gone live, although the listed ICS version still remains Android 4.0.3.
Those of us expecting to take advantage of Android’s face unlock feature, however, will have to play the waiting game a bit longer. ASUS has assured us that it is working on adding the feature, so hopefully we’ll see that included in an another update soon.
Depressing as that number is, it’s true. RIM’s new CEO, Thorsten Heins just revealed during his company’s fourth fiscal quarter earnings call that the company’s first attempt at a tablet ended up in the hands of just over a million people since being on sale for almost a year now.
This is of course the actual units sold and not the shipped figure that most companies tout. If you are looking for the number of shipments, then RIM says that it is just over 500,000 for the last quarter alone. Considering that’s half of the total units sold all last year, I’m guessing most of them are still sitting on shelves.
We have been hearing rumors about Google planning to get serious about the tablet segment by launching its own branded Android tablet this year. Eric Schmidt himself said a few months ago that Google plans to bring a tablet of the highest quality to the market in the next six months.
The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Google will be selling co-branded tablets on its own online store, just like it used to with the original Nexus One. This is an interesting move because if you remember, Google had to shut down that service and move to retail-store only as it wasn’t working out well.
Here comes an impressive milestone for you. Google Maps for Android has provided 50 billion kilometers of turn-by-turn navigation to its users. Quick calculations show that this is the distance you would cover if you traveled to the Sun and back 334 times.
To celebrate the occasion, Google has released Google Maps 6.5 for Android with a refreshed UI look and feel. The home screen in the Navigation part of the app is completely redesigned for Android 4.0+ devices and features a more intuitive and easier to use interface.
France is joining the list of countries where purchasing movies from the Google Play store is possible. France is only the second European country to do so after the UK, which was one of four countries of the initial launch of the service, along with US, Canada and Japan.
To celebrate the launch of the Google Play Movie store in France, Google has made French classics like “La Grotte Des Reves Perdu” and “Le Bal Des Actrices” free to download.
After some hesitation, Samsung is finally delivering the promised Value pack update for the original Galaxy S. The new firmware adds some Ice Cream Sandwich features to the Gingerbread-tasting Galaxy, including Face unlock.
It turns out, though, the Face unlock is actually better than the one present in the stock Android ICS, which is easy to bypass with a photo. Samsung’s team responsible for the value pack heard those concerns and made this unlock option more secure.
Google introduces a new way to track your personal usage by enabling you to view monthly usage statistics across various Google products.
Some of the statistics tracked include account sign-in locations, email and search usage, as well as how often you use various platforms.
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