Global announcement&Announcement & Sticky [0]

The Android 4.4.1 update from Google contains a lot of other minor changes, apart from the huge jump in camera performance for the Nexus 5. There are a lot of small bug-fixes and minor UI tweaks that should please Nexus users.

Below is a quick list of all the changes that Google has included in Android 4.4.1 KitKat for all the Nexus devices -:

• The Camera app on the Nexus 5 has sped up considerably post the update.
  
• The low volume output from the...

And now something light for the weekend! Don't say Tata Parano didn't warn you: Google knows everything! By using it on a daily basis for going places, posting pictures, searching for information, Google has managed to acquire a lot of data on you and has become an omniscient presence in our lives. Not only does Google know everything, Google remembers everything too: what you searched for, as well as when! Thanks to Google Trends, anyone can tap into what people over the entire world are looking for, which books they read, which people they like, the music they are listening to etc. Let's see...

Your Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE (model GT-I9305) does have some life left in its legs, as the folks over at CyanogenMod has made sure that Android 4.3 Jelly Bean is now part of the CyanogenMod 10.2 nightly ROM releases. In fact, it was just a couple of weeks ago when we brought you word that CyanogenMod 10.2 nightlies for Android 4.3 Jelly Bean has arrived, and here we are with the Galaxy S3 LTE variant being the most recent device to enjoy Android 4.3-based CyanogenMod 10.2 custom firmware.

One of the co-founders of Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, is set to launch a new mobile messaging application whose main selling point will be that the app will be closed to the prying eyes of the United States National Security Agency (NSA). Sunde hopes to take advantage of the recent controversy over the surveillance tactics being used by the NSA in order to drive interest in this new mobile application.

The app is set to be crowd funded by online companies such as PayPal and Bitcoin....

One of the most interesting features of the Samsung Galaxy S4 is the ability of it to connect to LTE networks, more commonly referred to as fourth generation networks or 4G. Those who possess the device (…and the data plan to back it up!) can activate LTE connection, but it requires a little bit of a work around. In case you didn’t know how to do it, here is a quick tutorial on getting it enabled for your Galaxy S4.

There are many carriers that have LTE networks in place,...

When you mention Google, what comes into your mind? Chances are, we will think about Google being the first and foremost search engine authority in the world, and that is absolutely correct. The thing is, Google's foray into making humankind live better surpasses more than delivering accurate as well as relevant search results. Without Google, we would not have Android, and consequently, this website would be pretty much non-existent. Google has invested heavily in different services such as Google...

Some of you are going to straight up yell out in anger at this piece of news and for just cause too! If you buy a product that boasts that it has so-and-so specifications, as indicated on the box, you expect it to be there with flying colors. New owners of the Galaxy S4 might be in for a nasty surprise.



A common problem among smartphones is that a lot of its storage and memory are used by the system itself. But none up to now has done what the Samsung Galaxy S4 has dared...

Think Android is especially vulnerable to hackers and spammers? The US military disagrees with you.

Samsung smartphones running a very secure version of Android have been approved for use by the US Department of Defense. Before today, only Blackberry smartphones had been approved for military use.

There were reports in the past of soldiers testing out secure builds of Android for use during military missions but this is the first time that the Android OS has actually been officially...

According to the latest data from the IDC, Samsung's share of smartphone shipments worldwide grew 60% over the past year, while Apple's shipments only grew 6.6%.
In fact almost all Korean and Chinese manufacturers had a better year than Apple.



Samsung was the undisputed winner, with a total of 32.7% of all shipments, nearly double that of Apple. LG, Huawei and ZTE, didn't do too badly either, shipping between 9 and 10 million handsets.

Surprisingly,...

Google has just released an app that lets people learn about different non profits every day and donate to the projects that inspire them. The app, called One Today, expands on Google's range of free services for nonprofits around the world.

In addition to being able to process charitable donations of 1 dollar per day (and no more than that), the app also has a social function, allowing you to match the donations of your friends and share your favorite causes quickly and easily through Google+.

Every day, users...

Well, well, what do we have here? The Samsung Galaxy S4, which was first introduced to the masses in a New York City event earlier this year, will finally be arriving in the hands of interested consumers. Sure, AT&T did list that said smartphone will ship this coming April 30th, but if you are a hardcore Verizon subscriber, what is waiting for another month to remain with your favorite mobile carrier?

Of course, there was no specific date listed, although the presence of previous leaked information did point towards May...

There's been more news about the X Phone by Motorala and this is may be some suprising information. It's nice to know that its appearance is something that we can at least bet on: it's been reported that the illusive headset may come out in over 20 colors.



Guy Kawasaki hinted on his Google+ page that the X Phone will be customizable and the speculated colors of the rainbows is just one more hint that makes us believe this could be true. Some of the other rumours that we heard were a little far-fetched: a 4000 mAh battery,...

Samsung apologized for the recent fake online reviews that some staff members posted trying to discredit their competitor the HTC. This race between the two started to get dirty and it's a good sign that Samsung apologized for their actions. Competitor or not, that was just unsportsmanlike.



What Samsung had been doing was allowing its staff members to post comments anonymously and that's how things got taken too far. According to the Associated Press of France, the company hired Taiwanese students to make fun of HTC. The practice...

A new update to Facebook Messenger brings Facbook's new "Chat Heads" feature to your Android, regardless of whether or not you've installed Facebook Home.
Now, when you're using other apps or you're lingering around your home screen, Messenger messages will pop up with the Chat Head icon of the person you're communicating with, and you can dive right into your conversation without leaving the app you're currently looking at.

If you're getting too distracted, all you have to...

Yesterday, Google unveiled a new version of their Play Store, complete with a re-imagined homescreen featuring a card-based interface, new pull-down menus and a more aesthetically-pleasing layout, an improved search function and brighter colors. Images are bigger, icons are clearer and the whole app just seems better-designed.

Google is pushing out the update worldwide over the coming months, but if you haven't seen it show up on your phone, don't worry: we've got the APK for you...

A preliminary version of Facebook Home recently appeared on the internet. The complete version will be available in Google Play Store for selected devices on April 12th. We've taken a pre-emptive first look at the controversial Facebook Home and here's what we thought.



The version of Facebook Home that I tested out is not the full version and didn't have all the functions. On the other hand, it was more than enough to get a first taste.
After you've...

No other app store is so heavily used as Google's Play Store. Even though Apple is lagging behind in the number of downloads, it's leading the race when in comes to revenue. Will Google (need to) change their business model in the midterm?



The app market is booming. In 2013's first quarter, the four app stores - Google, Apple, Blackberry and Windows - shared more than 13.4 billion downloads, resulting a combined revenue of 2.2 billion US dollars. When comparing this to the fourth quarter...

The post-PC era is in full effect. According to market research firm IDC, global PC shipments dropped nearly 14-percent in Q1, totaling 76.3 million units. While that's certainly no paltry sum, it marks the largest year-over-year decline since the IDC began tracking the PC market in 1994. The Q1 2013 results serve as the latest lackluster figures in what has become a consistent quarterly trend of poor PC performance since last year. While the study includes Apple notebooks and desktops, it clearly paints Microsoft's Windows 8 platform as the culprit.

"At this point, unfortunately,...

Facebook's first phone was unveiled just a few days ago, but the APK that can Facebookify your Android's homescreen has already leaked online. The only problems? The list of devices it'll work on is pretty short and it's a bit of a buggy experience.

If those warnings don't deter, you though, you may want to read on. According to Phandroid, the Facebook Home APK should work on any device so long as it doesn't have a maximum resolution higher than 1280 x 768p. This excludes any phone with a 1080p display. You must also have...

It's still a good time to own stock in Samsung.

The Korean tech bohemith has announced their earnings estimate for Q1 2013, and the company is swimming in money (naturally). Samsung thinks their operating profit will land between 8.5 and 8.9 trillion won ($7.56 – $7.92 billion) for the quarter. That's a healthy increase over the same quarter last year, when the company made somewhere between 51 and 53 trillion won ($45.39 - $47.17 billion).

Samsung made...

Hey we heard you liked Facebook so we added Facebook to your Facebook so you can Facebook while you Facebook. Because who needs a homescreen or apps when theres this thing called Facebook?

I would rather get punched by a kangaroo than install a launcher that doesn't allow me to do anything except stare at a never-ending stream of status updates. I have a hard enough time staying off Facebook when I'm trying to work; why would I want it in my face all the time?
Facebook's Home,...

It was only a matter of time before Facebook took a step closer in overtaking more mobile world territory and today marks a day where they are clearly making this their aim. Mark Zuckerberg says that he is really really excited about this and I think many people will be too. There were two important revelations today: Home and the HTC first. Along with HTC, who has been accumulating popularity with its other new smartphones, Facebook plans on really changing the way smartphones work, making them more centered around people and your contacts, than the apps. Their goal is to make the phone a more...

True to form, the HTC First has been announced at Facebook’s event this morning, where this is the first smartphone that was specially designed to jive with the freshly minted Facebook Home. In a nutshell, if you are willing to shell out $99.99 for a 2-year contract with AT&T, then you can take full advantage of Facebook’s latest mobile experience. This could very well be the Facebook phone that the masses have been waiting for all this while.

Just what kind of hardware specifications...

Samsung certainly intends to milk the Galaxy franchise for all it is worth, and it makes perfect business sense, too. After all, the galaxy that we know is a vast one, so what is another sub-division of the Galaxy series? So far, bigger is better, as Samsung had pushed with its Galaxy range of smartphones and phablets, and the next family under the Galaxy name would be the Samsung Galaxy Mega series.

There will be a couple of devices that will fall under the jurisdiction,...

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the next flagship smartphone from the South Korean conglomerate that looks set to raise the bar where high end models are concerned, and while the jump in hardware technology is not that big compared to what its predecessors offered, it would be the close fusion between hardware and software that will make the end user experience a wonderful one. It seems that the Galaxy S4, under the guise of the Samsung SGH-i337, has arrived at the...

Google's Glasses will be made in the United States (yaaay!) but manufactured by Foxconn (whaaa?). According to the Financial Times, the futuristic headwear will be manufacturers at a plant in Santa Clara, California by the Taiwanese industrial giant behind the iPhone and many Android models.

Google's decision comes on the heels of Apple's big announcement to spent $100 million to relocate construction of the existing Mac lines to the U.S. Apple's plans were so noteworthy that...

Google offers so many ways to communicate with others. You've got GChat, Voice, Messenger, Drive, GMail and Talk, to name a few. The problem is that the services don't talk to each other. However, if current rumors are to be believed, that's about to change.

Rumor has it that Google is going to consolidate their messaging offerings into a single app called "Babel." Support for the app will be baked into Android 5.0 / Key Lime Pie – the next edition of Android. It will...

A bunch of details about Facebook's new HTC phone have emerged ahead of the company's press event on April 4th. According to the New York Times, the main announcement will be Facebook's new Android OS, which will apparently replace the typical Android homepage with the owner's Facebook feed. The default messaging and camera apps, meanwhile, will be replaced by Facebook Messenger and a variant of Instagram, respectively.

Essentially, the entire phone will be built around Facebook's...

Just as expected, carriers have begun to slash prices on Samsung's Galaxy S3 handset in anticipation of stocking the bigger, fancier Samsung Galaxy S4 successor.
AT&T announced this morning that beginning today, its Galaxy S3 will sell for $99.99 with a two-year contract, an instant $100 reduction. Expect other carriers to follow suit.
Galaxy S4 preorders begin on April 16 for AT&T. The $250 in-contract Galaxy S4 cost makes the Galaxy S3 look like...

As you know, United States District Judge Lucy Koh shaved $450 million off the $1.05 billion verdict the jury handed to Apple in the high-stake Apple v. Samsung patent trial last August, citing “an impermissible legal theory.” She ordered a new trial for the remaining fourteen Samsung products and Nokia – of all companies – filed a brief with the appeals court on behalf of Apple, claiming Judge Koh got it all wrong. And in the latest twist to the ongoing legal saga, the...

I am quite sure that every computer and mobile device user worth his or her salt would have at least one Gmail, Twitter and Facebook account by now, or even if you don’t, you have had experience dealing with Facebook, be it in your line of work or otherwise. There is just no escaping the juggernaut that is Facebook no matter where you turn, and something exciting could very well be pulled out of Facebook’s hat this coming April 4th as they intend to parade to the masses its “new home on Android.”

The Nexus 4 from LG is not a bad smartphone per se, heck, it is not even an average smartphone, but a pretty high end model that carries the Nexus name - which definitely goes to say something, of course, especially when it has Google’s backing to do so. Sure, it suffered from a shortage in stock sometime in the past, and questions of the white Nexus 4 being on par with that of a unicorn in terms of reality continue to be asked over the Internet, but it seems that Google and LG have quietly snuck...

Sprint Galaxy S2 owners, look out for some Jelly Bean
goodness!

The Samsung Galaxy S2 proved to be quite a serious challenger to the iPhone when it was first released, and it had also been on the receiving end of operating system updates long after it has been phased out from the market by its successor, the Samsung Galaxy S3. Well, now that we have the Samsung Galaxy S4 just waiting in the wings to be released very soon, how does the Galaxy S2 fare today? We are glad to bring you...

Purported specifications for Tegra 4 "Wayne" chips have surfaced, courtesy of Chinese site VR-Zone, revealing that NVIDIA is finally prepping its tech to support LTE radios.

As reported by The Verge, four variations are on their way next year, ranging from 1.2GHz to 2GHz clock speeds.



The "flagship" T40 is set for release during the first quarter of 2013, and will be found within 10-inch tablet devices. The remaining three will be available during Q3, with...

We're still waiting for more details on Google's new wearable computing headset, Google Glass. But according to the Financial TImes (via The Verge), the initial run of Glass will take place at a manufacturing plant in Santa Clara, California. Obviously, few major electronics are still made right here in the U.S., so the news is definitely a big deal.



But while it seems the first mass production of Glass may take place at a California Foxconn plant, there's no indication...

A week after Samsung Unpacked, the buzz about the new Galaxy S4 is still going strong and we've decided to consolidate the facts in one easy, convenient location. Here's everything we know about the Samsung Galaxy S4 so far, from hardware specs to cool new features.

The Skinny on the S4's Hardware
The S4 handset is a lighter, sleeker upgrade from Samsung's Galaxy S3, coming it at 0.31-inches thick, compared to the 0.34 inches on the S3. And while isn't a major difference, the S4 is a whole 0.1 ounces lighter...

With the rumor mill working overtime on Apple's iOS smartwatch, Samsung is determined not to get left behind in the fledgling wearable smartphone market. Lee Young Hee, Samsung’s executive vice president of mobile business, told Bloomberg: “We’ve been preparing the watch product for so long. We are working very hard to get ready for it. We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them.”

Just last month, it was reported that Apple had assembled a team of about 100 people to develop its own wristwatch iOS device, a move that presumably may have had an impact...

Apparently, the time has come for the Google Nexus rumors to begin. Today, an alleged Google employee has passed a photo of what he claims is the LG Nexus 5 to Android and Me (via Ars Technica). The image shows a ridiculously dark and grainy apparition of a low-profile smartphone with a comparatively clear screen, displaying what appears to be Watch Dogs protagonist Aiden Pearce.


Image Source: Android and Me

According to the source, Google will release the Nexus 5 in October...

Google Now is a really cool, useful service that is, for the time being, only enjoyed by those using Android devices. The digital organizational tool keeps you informed on the fly, and while the system feels awfully mobile-centric, a desktop version could have great potential. As noted by TechCrunch, references to Google Now were found in the latest Chromium build.



Google Now can actually be turned on in the Chromium backend, but without a server to...

onight clearly belongs to Samsung. The company is set to reveal its next flagship phone, the Galaxy S IV, during tonight's "Unpacked" event in New York City. But according to Reuters, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, had some choice words for Samsung and the Android platform.

Claiming to use Google's own data, Schiller told Reuters the majority of Android users are still on older versions of the mobile OS. The Apple VP claims varied, customized versions of Android -- like those used by Amazon -- are the root cause of the problem.

Samsung has announced its worst kept secret, but nonetheless exciting Galaxy S4. Revealed at tonight's Unpacked event in New York City, the Galaxy S4 will take the mantle of the Galaxy S III as Samsung's new flagship smartphone, sporting a massive 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display with a pixel density of 441ppi — a significant leap over the Galaxy S III's 306ppi display and the iPhone 5's 326ppi retina display. While similar to last year's model, the design has undergone some notable upgrades, including a thinner bezel around the new display and sleek metal trim around the sides.