There are already a number of AirPods alternatives on the market – but noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes we’re about to get more. He points to supply-chain reports suggesting that both Google and Amazon are working on direct competitor products.
But he also expects Apple to work on holding its market lead by adding new functionality …
The Google Earth app is incredibly popular on iOS, and the Mountain View company has finally updated it to support 64-bit iPhone and iPad CPUs. This means the app can now run on iOS 11, which does not launch any 32-bit-only apps.
As well as much-needed architectural compatibility, the update brings a redesign and several new flagship features, including Flyover-esque 3D views of major cities and ‘Voyager’ guided tours.
Amazon has announced its latest addition to the Echo family, the $229 Amazon Echo Show. Adding to its popular range of home virtual assistant devices, the Show combines the usual Amazon Alexa voice commands with a 7-inch touchscreen, displaying information like weather reports and music lyrics in response to your voice queries.
It also features a camera to enable video calls between friends and family. The Echo Show is up for pre-order now, available in white or black models, and is shipping to customers from June 28.
Verizon is bringing back its unlimited data plans. With the new Verizon Unlimited plan launching on Monday, customers can use as much 4G LTE data, send as many texts as they like and talk for as long as they please … for $80 per month. An equivalent uncapped family plan charges $45 per line for 4 people, or $180 monthly.
The ‘unlimited’ plans have a few strings attached, namely hotspot tethering is limited at 10 GB for 4G (will fallback to 3G after) and although data is uncapped, high data users will not be prioritized if the network is congested …
Google, Apple and 95 other Silicon Valley technology firms, filed an amicus brief over the weekend to oppose the immigration order introduced by Donald Trump (via Bloomberg). The filing contributes to the lawsuit being held in Washington and Minnesota.
In the brief, the companies say an open-ended ban does not aid America’s national security and instead undermines its interests. It notes that 40% of the companies in the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants, or their children.
Chinese phone sales continue to be dominated by local brands as shown by the latest analyst data via Bloombeerg. With the exception of Apple’s iPhone, all of the top manufacturers in the region are Chinese companies that make Android phones. Across 2016, Oppo, Huawei and Vivo grew in the double digits to take the top three slots and represent half of all smartphone sales.
Xiaomi slipped to fourth place with 35% fall in sales and Samsung Galaxy phones failed to hit the top five at all, being grouped into the ‘Others’ miscellaneous category by IDC.
Twitter is rolling out a new feature into its native client app for Android. From today, users will be able to start video live stream broadcasts from within the Twitter app courtesy of a new integration with Periscope, which Twitter acquired in 2013.
To start a live video, open the tweet compose screen and tap the new “Live” button. You can frame your shot and then press Go Live to start broadcasting to the world. The feature is rolling out gradually over the next few days.
AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson will soon announce that a consortium of 33 companies, including Google, AT&T, Apple and Comcast are joining the FCC in an effort to crack down on phone call spam made by robots, according to Reuters. In the inaugural “Robocall Strike Force” meeting, the companies will announce their initial plans on how to stop US phone owners from receiving advertorial spam run by automated machines …
Having already released its first mobile game Miitomo, a bespoke social networking game, Nintendo is now teasing the next round of games headed to mobile devices. Notably, unlike Miitomo, these are going to be versions of existing successful Nintendo franchises: Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem.
Although Animal Crossing is not quite on the same podium as Super Mario, it is still major first-party intellectual property for Nintendo to release on non-Nintendo consoles for the first time. The new smartphone and tablet titles are expected to be released later this year, around October.
Today, WhatsApp is announcing that all messages, photos, phone calls and videos sent over its messaging app will be encrypted end-to-end. This means that no one can access any communications apart from the people in the conversation. This means if WhatsApp is subpoenaed by government for information, WhatsApp will not be able to help them as it simply cannot help them.
Adele’s newest album, 25, launches on Friday and is expected to widely beat music album sales records. However, it won’t be available on streaming services like Spotify or Google Play Music. According to the New York Times, Adele’s management has informed digital music distributors that 25 will not be offered for streaming, at least initially. You can of course buy the album in Google Play and the iTunes Store at full price; preorders are up now.
A report on Weibo suggests that Samsung will be adding pressure-sensitive screens next year following its biggest rival, Apple, with the launch of the iPhone 6s and 3D Touch. Samsung phones currently can respond to force through the use of the stylus but the ‘Galaxy S7’ would reportedly respond to pressure from standard touch input.
The Weibo post indicates that Samsung will be using Synaptic screen technology, which 9to5Google reported on last week. The manufacturer is licensing its ClearForce hardware to OEMs to increase adoption of pressure-sensitive displays in consumer phones and tablets. The Android Huawei Mate S already includes this feature.
Strategy Analytics has a new report out claiming that Samsung has once again become the number one smartphone manufacturer by units shipped worldwide. Although Samsung doesn’t officially report unit numbers in its earnings call, the analytics firm is estimating 83 million smartphones sold worldwide for the company. IDC is also reporting similar numbers.
Apple, which does report the number of iPhones it shipped, sold 61 million iPhones in the last quarter. Whilst this is a new quarterly record for Apple, it is easily outstripped by Samsung’s estimated numbers by about 20 million units. Apple became the number one vendor last quarter due to the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and mild sales of Samsung’s Galaxy lineup. However, these numbers show Samsung’s latest flagship, the Galaxy S6, is off to a good start.
In an amusing retaliation to Jony Ive’s opinion of Motorola’s Moto Maker, Motorola president described their company as a ‘different philosophy’ as well as directly attacking Apple’s product lineup, describing iPhone prices as ‘outrageous’ in a conversation with the BBC. Expand
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The Apple TV today received a brand new YouTube app, bringing it up to speed and largely mirroring the experience available on other set-top boxes, with new predictive search and recommendations. The previous app felt like something built by the Apple developers internally, whereas this new app seems to be predominantly designed by Google … with rich YouTube branding throughout.
According to Forbes, Microsoft will soon enter the wearable market with a competing smartwatch device. The report says the device will track heart rate for fitness, like other Android and Apple smartwatches.
Re/code has posted an interview with Google’s ‘new’ head of social at the company, David Besbris, after taking over from Vic Gundotra. The interview ranges in scope, but most notably it opens with a direct question about the future of Google+ with many rumors circulating that Google intends to kill off the ‘failure’.
Unsurprisingly, Besbris denies the claims and says that Google made a long-term bet. It has no intentions to drop Google+ from its offerings.
Is Google+ going away anytime soon?
We’re actually very happy with the progress of Google+, [CEO Larry Page] said this at the time that Vic transitioned that he’s going to continue working on building this stuff, that he’s very happy with it. The company is behind it. I have no idea where these rumors come from to be honest with you.
Search Engine Land has received confirmation from Google that it is widening its sources for the news callout boxes in Google search results. Previously, this section of Google search pages only included select online publications and newspapers.
With this new change, though, Google says that almost any form of online article content can now be presented in this fashion. This includes Reddit posts. Google has officially commented on the change; the statement is included below.
Google has announced that it is creating another one of its ‘campuses’ in Spain, following successful launches in London and Tel Aviv. These spaces are targeted at entrepreneurs looking for informal office spaces to kickstart new projects and careers. Campuses include working areas, testing devices as well as teaching from experienced mentors and business leaders.
Essentially, Google makes these areas to help startups get off the ground. It is an ethically driven venture for Google as there is no charge for participation. Google claims that the campus in London created more than 570 jobs last year. It is looking to recreate similar levels of success in Spain.
PhoneArena has some new pics claiming to show off leaked renders of a new Samsung device, the Samsung Galaxy A5. This appears to be part of a new range of phones, based off the Galaxy Alpha. We have seen some prototype pics of the device before.
The ‘A’ lineup appears to symbolise Samsung’s phone with ‘premium’ materials (non plastic body, for instance). The A5 is supposedly made of aluminium, featuring a 5 inch AMOLED screen with a 720P resolution. The phone also appears to include a 13 megapixel rear camera and a 5 megapixel front camera. With Samsung’s recent focus on battery life, it’s unsurprising that the A5 will pack a 2,300 mAH battery — according to reports.
For the third quarter, HTC has announced that it earned $21 million in profit on revenue of $1.37 billion. Although this is a huge improvement over the hundred million dollar loss they reported in the year-ago quarter, the company remains in a shaky financial situation. Most of the return to profitability is accounted for by a drastic cost-cutting policy rather than increases in device sales.
Sales actually fell 8% in September year-on-year, following a 33% fall in July and a 10% improvement in August. Apple and Samsung remain fierce competition for the Taiwanese company, despite good hardware advancements in the HTC One M8.
Following Samsung’s display of its ‘Gluteus Maximus’ resilience, the OnePlus team have joined in to show how durable the OnePlus One is. Just like any other test facility, you see tests of drops, bends, sits, impact, tumble and weather. Unsurprisingly, the video shows the phones withstanding all of these conditions, including ten minutes of rain.
At OnePlus we believe that high quality shouldn’t come with a high price tag. Today our team made a special trip to our factory to film and put together this insider’s look at how our smartphones ace their quality control tests.
You can now add a real thermal camera to a range of Android smartphones, with this accessory by Seek Thermal. The company sells the heat-seeking attachment for $199 on its website. Due to the design of the gadget, it will only fit in certain Android phones as standard, such as Samsung’s range of Galaxy phones and the Motorola Moto X. A full list can be found on the compatibility pages of Seek Thermal’s site, so check to see if your phone is suitable before buying.
At its Unpacked event today, Samsung presented a brand new device, the Galaxy Note Edge. The Note Edge is based off of the iconic large-screen Note design, but adds a sharp curve to the side edge of the device. The screen wraps around as well. This makes a ‘screen lip’ which Samsung describes as a unique way of to access information. This curved section displays notifications, quick access buttons to apps and more ancillary features — completely separate from the main phone screen.
RemObjects is using its experience with compilers to allow developers to use Apple’s Swift coding language for Android development. Previously, the company did something similar for C# and now the company is tackling Swift. Silver allows app makers to write in the Swift language (which is still in its infancy, really) but code against the API’s and frameworks of non-Apple platforms.
Amidst the news that Apple is officially acquiring Beats for $3 billion, the service has announced a price cut. The subscription service now costs just $99 a year, down from $120. In addition, Beats users can now trial the service for free for fourteen days. The Beats Music app for Android also been updated to reflect these changes, alongside the usual performance tweak and bug fixes.
What’s NewVersion 1.0.9:* We’re stoked to announce that our no strings attached trial has been extended to 14 days to ensure everyone gets ample time to explore the full Beats Music experience.* We’ve dropped the price of our yearly subscription to $99.99, down from $119.88.* To top it off, we pushed tons of bug fixes so the whole experience runs smooth as silk.
Android users will also be happy to know that Apple has no plans to shut down the Android app just yet. In an interview with the Financial Times, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Beats app for Android and Windows Phone will remain available.
Beats Music can be downloaded, for free, from Google Play.
A seemingly drastic turn of events in the appeals court has reversed the ruling on some elements of the Google-Oracle trial.
The ruling enables Oracle to claim copyright ownership over some parts of Java. The crux of the trial was whether API names and constructs could be owned. The initial decision said that it couldn’t, giving Google a landslide victory. However, the appeal court papers now say the exact opposite:
For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organiza- tion of the 37 Java API packages are entitled to copyright protection. Because there is an insufficient record as to the relevant fair use factors, we remand for further proceedings on Google’s fair use defense.
According to Boy Genius Report, Amazon is readying its own-brand cellular wireless plan as part of its new phone launch.
However, the plans are still quite mysterious. Although the name has leaked, specific details about what Amazon’s cellular plan will entail are not known. Apparently, the plan is “unique”.
The plan is tentatively named “Prime Data,” and it will be positioned as one of several key selling points for the phone.
BGR characterizes the other information in its report as “speculation” from sources. The post suggests Amazon could launch exclusively on AT&T in the US and ‘Prime Data’ would resemble something similar to AT&T’s Sponsored Data offerings. This may mean users get free access to Amazon’s content.
Boy Genius Report has posted its knowledge of Amazon’s next smartphone. Although it technically hasn’t been confirmed to be an Android device, it is almost certain that it will be powered by Android at some level, given Amazon’s existing Android ecosystem. BGR claims to have the first pictures of the phone, shown above.
According to the report, the phone will feature a 3D interface. This feature is enabled through a set of four front-facing Infrared cameras that track the position and orientation of the user’s face. The user interface can then update in response to facial movements. Apparently, the four sensors are located in each corner of the front face. The Wall Street Journal reported that the product would feature a 3D interface last week and is set for a June launch.
Vine has just released its ‘biggest update yet’ to the Play Store, bringing one-on-one video messaging to the service for the first time. Analogous with Twitter DM’s, Vine’s VM’s work in the same way — hosting private conversations outside of the main stream. As you might expect, conversations can include short video clips as well as text messages.
On the Google Cloud Platform blog, Google has announced that it has now publicly released its ‘Andromeda’ virtualization stack to all Platform users. Users on its US central and western European servers should see ‘major’ performance gains automatically. Google is rolling out the same changes to its other zones in the coming months, so all users will benefit from the same efficiency gains.
Andromeda’s goal is to expose the raw performance of the underlying network while simultaneously exposing network function virtualization (NFV). We expose the same in-network processing that enables our internal services to scale while remaining extensible and isolated to end users. This functionality includes distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, transparent service load balancing, access control lists, and firewalls. We do this all while improving performance, with more enhancements coming.
Hence, Andromeda itself is not a Cloud Platform networking product; rather, it is the basis for delivering Cloud Platform networking services with high performance, availability, isolation, and security. For example, Cloud Platform firewalls, routing, and forwarding rules all leverage the underlying internal Andromeda APIs and infrastructure. Our site presents the details of these and other advanced network capabilities.
Full technical details of the Andromeda changes can be found in the blog post.
Amazon has just announced its Apple TV competitor, dubbed ‘Fire TV’. You can buy it now from Amazon.com for $99. The product roughly resembles an Apple TV in size and shape, but is thinner by a few millimetres and has square (rather than rounded) edges. Spec-wise, Amazon claims it is three times as powerful as Apple TV or Roku. It runs on a quad-core processor with 2GB RAM. The fireTV can stream video at 1080p over HDMI, alongside Dolby Digital surround sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoNQrxG_8M
Input comes via a Bluetooth remote that features a five-way directional pad and some ancillary buttons. The remote has an inbuilt microphone, so you can speak show titles to have it automatically search for them.
A new Google+ addition, rolled out (confusingly) in the midst of April Fool’s season, makes view counts optionally visible on your profile. Both profiles and pages can now show the number of times content on your Google+ has been viewed. The view count applies to all content, totalling the number of views across your profile, posts and photos.
The stat can be optionally hidden. To change the visibility, go to your Google+ settings (plus.google.com/settings) and toggle the checkbox labelled ‘Show how many times your profile and content have been viewed’.
Kantar Worldpanel has released its latest report on smartphone marketshare for the last three months. Android share is up significantly compared to a year ago, with Kantar calling out two devices in particular for their contributions to this increase: the Moto G and the LG G2.
In the US, Kantar says that Android has a 55% share of smartphone OS sales share, up from 51.1% in February 2013, an increase of 3.9 percentage points. This compares favourably to iOS’ performance, which fell 4.9 points year-on-year to a 38.7% share. Incidentally, Windows Phone was the only other platform to grow in the US, rising from 4.1% in 2013 to 5.3%.
LG has posted an image of its upcoming smartwatch on Twitter, perhaps trying to deflect attention away from the Moto 360. The watch will run on the Android Wear platform, but unlike Motorola, LG has opted to use a traditional square screen for the ‘G Watch’.
Other than teasing that the device is ‘coming soon’, LG is still reluctant to release detailed specifications about the device. However, the Wall Street Journal is reporting some more concrete technical specifications according to ‘a person familiar with the matter’. The Journal says that the device will feature a 1.65 inch display with a resolution of around 240 pixels per inch.
After spending about a month and a half in the beta channel, Chrome is rolling out Google Now notifications to all Chrome users. To activate the feature, Google says to sign in with the same Google account used on Android (or iOS).
In a legal fight which has stretched over seven years, Google seems to have finally resolved their issues with Viacom over copyright violations of videos uploaded to YouTube. Information on the details of the settlement have not been publicly released.
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Re/code received this rather bland statement from the two companies.
Google and Viacom today jointly announced the resolution of the Viacom vs. YouTube copyright litigation. This settlement reflects the growing collaborative dialogue between our two companies on important opportunities, and we look forward to working more closely together.
Fleksy, the makers of the ‘smart’ predicting custom keyboard, are bringing their technology to the Samsung Gear 2. Fleksy says they are the first custom keyboard developer to integrate with the Gear 2 to enable sending and responding text messages, at a microscopic scale.
With a hilariously small button layout, it’s hard to believe that input will be anywhere near accurate enough for real use.
Photo: ibtimes.com
Customers buying Samsung devices at Samsung retail stores will soon receive a personalized experience based on their job, hobbies and other traits, 9to5Google has learned.
This includes contextually preloading third-party apps at point of purchase. For example, banking, finance and spreadsheet apps will be targeted at people working in corporations or self-employed businessmen. Similarly, students in higher education will get office suites and note-taking apps preinstalled. Casual games are also in the pool of possible apps, particularly aimed at satisfying younger buyers.
CNET is reporting that Google is set to announce a smartwatch next month, manufactured by LG (who also manufactured the two most recent Nexus phones). The device is described as the Nexus of smartwatches, with Google controlling the design of software and hardware.
Although Google will announce the product in March, the watch will not be released until June at Google I/O. As 9to5Google reported last year, Google’s smartwatch will revolve around Google Now’s assistant features with voice playing a major role in how users interact with the product.
There have been indications for a long time that Google Now was eventually coming to the Chrome browser on the desktop. Via the Google Operating System Blog, the service has finally surfaced in the most recent release of Chrome Canary (Google’s name for the app’s ‘alpha’ channel builds).
As expected, Google Now in Chrome closely mirrors Google Now on Android. The contextually-relevant cards (which show information such as weather, news or upcoming flights) appear in Chrome’s Notification Center on the desktop. This area be found in the Window’s taskbar or the Mac’s menubar, represented by a bell icon.
Google has announced the winners of the 2013 Players’ Choice awards for top Google Play apps and games. The awards are given based on user popularity, unlike the apps featured last week in the Play Store for a similar award, which were chosen by Google themselves. There were six categories spanning apps and games. The winners of each respective category are listed below, as chosen by the Android community.
Google’s proposed data center (red icon) location in the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in Kowloon, next to a golf course.
News that Google was building new data centers in Hong Kong have circulated since the beginning of the year. Google has, however, now decided to cancel the project in Hong Kong. The company blames real estate acquisition issues as the reason for the decision. It isn’t immediately apparent if Google’s contentious relationship with the Chinese Government is to blame or if Honk Kong’s operation costs were at issue. It was reported in September 2011 that Google had already acquired 2.7 hectares of land n the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in Kowloon which was expected to employ 25 full-time Googlers by this year…
Rockstar has announced that Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is coming to mobile platforms next month. Following on from Vice City (also available on Android), San Andreas is the third 3D instalment in the 3D GTA franchise.
Despite being bought out by Google, the replacement mail app Sparrow has now been updated for iOS 7. Whilst the developers behind Sparrow never said that work on the app had ceased, this was the implied meaning of Sparrow’s thank you letter still visible on the Sparrow website. Until today, the app had not been updated since December 2012, nearly a year ago.
This update brings compatibility bug fixes for iOS 7 as well as a new flatter icon, shown above. Even so, work on Sparrow is obviously not a priority for the team. Apart from a new icon, the point-fix update brings no new visual appearance to the app’s interface or any new features for users.
Google has apologized for Gmail delivery delays experienced by some users yesterday. Google says that whilst most messages were not affected, 29% of messages were delayed by a couple of seconds, with only 1.5% of messages being critically delayed, by as much as two hours. The issue lasted for about 8 hours, starting at around 5:30 am PST.
The Verge has learned that HTC has laid off about a fifth of its America division. It seems affected employees were informed yesterday, with the cuts affecting multiple departments. The Verge says the company has confirmed that layoffs have taken place, but would not offer more detail.
The Verge has also managed to get a hold of a letter to employees from Jason Mackenzie, the president of HTC America. He is quoted as calling this the “the most difficult day” of his career. He said that this measures are part of a broader plan to “simplify our organisation” and “sharpen our teams focus”. The full statement is included below.
Google is currently split-testing a new Google homepage layout. The redesign is not drastically different to tradition, but Google seems to be testing a different look for its persistent top-bar. As shown, the black strip as well as most of the shortcuts to other Google properties have been removed. In this version, the only shortcuts in the top navigation are links to Google+, Gmail and Google Images.
Notably, this design uses the flatter logo previously seen in the new Chrome for Android beta. At the time, The Verge said a source refuted claims that this is a new logo, saying that the flatter look was only meant for places where the traditional logo would not display well, such as when printed onto banners. However, this homepage redesign shows that Google is at least considering to use this new logo as their main branding in the future.