Rumors are flying suggesting that, alongside its increasingly popular Galaxy Note line of phablets, Samsung could be set to release a new set of phablets under the moniker of Samsung Galaxy Mega. While the name is definitely ripe for change, we’re more interested in the larger screens that these new handsets are said to sport.
Either today or yesterday, depending on where you are, marks the 40th birthday of the cell phone. On the 3rd of April 1973 Motorola Engineer Martin Cooper made the first successful public call from a cell phone, officially kicking off what was not known then, but clear as day in hindsight, one of the many technological revolutions that would change the world. In case you were wondering, the recipient of Cooper’s inaugural call was Joe Engel, his direct competitor and head of research at Bell Labs, thus making it one of the bigger “in your face” jabs in tech history.
HTC will be ditching its now familiar “Quietly Brilliant” tagline in favor of more aggressive marketing stance. According to the Wall St Journal, HTC Chief Marketing Officer Benjamin Ho has declared that the new marketing approach will be “bolder”. We can’t help feeling that the decision is, while entirely laudable, perhaps a smidge late. HTC may have been ‘quietly brilliant’ for years now, but its recent crowning achievement, the HTC One, deserved a lot more fanfare and hoopla upon its global unveiling than it received. Perhaps a louder approach to marketing would have been more effective a few weeks, or even a month or more ago, rather than after the biggest launch of HTC’s recent history.
The idea of wireless power transfer is not a new one. Nikola Tesla demonstrated it as a working concept as early as 1893. A few years back researchers at MIT outlined a short-range method in a paper titled “non-radiative mid-range energy transfer”, more recently multiple smartphone manufacturers have already introduced wireless charging pads in to the market (including Nokia) and countless other researches are working wireless energy transfer in the hopes of one day ditching the cord.
The BlackBerry Z10 has been hailed as BlackBerry’s last best hope for survival in the smartphone market. It’s the new BB10 OS’ flagship, sports a totally modern set of hardware specs and is a step in a different direction for BB in terms of stylistic design.
The HTC One, the smartphone that is set to be HTC’s biggest and most important release in recent memory, is reportedly going to be delayed by a few weeks or possibly longer. While countless eagre fans worldwide will doubtless throw their hands up in frustration and ask ‘why’ to an uncaring and disinterested sky, HTC may actually have cause to worry here.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 (GS4) has finally been unveiled at an odd, broadway-themed Samsung launch event in New York. While the event itself was strange enough to possibly warrant its own post a little later on, for now we’ll stick to covering the new heir to the Android throne, the Galaxy S4, and the new hardware/features that it brings.
Netflix has released an ISP Speed Index outlining what providers offer the best connections to its services and where. The popular video-streaming company compared 17 broadband network carriers in the US and ranked them according to their average speeds when streaming Netflix videos.
With the Samsung Galaxy SIV launch just one week way, we thought it wise to revisit some of the rumors that are circulating about it, as well as the (apparently) ‘real’ leaked specs that have cropped up recently and what those mean for Samsung, the GSIV and how they reflect the current smartphone market.
The Sony Xperia Z is Sony’s first big entry to the quad-core Android wars that are sure to hit 2013 with more power than they did 2012. Encoragingly, the Xperia Z represents an almost new era for Sony. This new flagship smartphone really does sport modern hardware and a new UI skin.
Hundreds of cell phone plans unpacked. All the facts. No surprises.