After months of testing, Valve has released Counter-Strike 2, successor to the popular CS:GO game for PCs to everyone, as it had promised. Built on the Source 2 engine, Counter-Strike 2 is modernized with realistic physically-based rendering, state-of-the-art networking, and upgraded Community Workshop tools, said the company. Continue reading “Counter-Strike 2 Free to Play game now available to download”
Earlier this fall, Motorola announced two very interesting smartphones called the RAZR M and the RAZR i. From the outside they look exactly the same, but on the inside the M model sports a dual core Qualcomm chip, whereas the i model uses an Intel Atom. Silicon aside, what makes these phones so intriguing is their displays. At 4.3 inches and a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels, they’re not the most advanced panels on the planet, but they have almost no border. What advantages does that bring? The RAZR M, despite having a 4.3 inch display, is practically the same size as Apple’s new 4 inch iPhone 5. Continue reading “AU Optronics announces a 4.46 inch 720p display with practically no border”
ZTE has just announced an Android 4.0 powered smartphone called the U950. It’s got a quad core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor under the hood, 1 GB of RAM, a 5 megapixel camera, and a 4.3 inch display that pushes 800 x 480 pixels. In other words, it’s an above average device. What makes it amazing is the price: $160. That’s totally out of this world when you consider that most smartphones in that price range have a single core processor and half the amount of RAM. Will the U950 ever be sold outside of China? That hasn’t been confirmed yet. All we know is that it’s going on sale in China on November 11th. At first only 100,000 units will be made, which means there’s a pretty big chance it’s going to sell out. Continue reading “ZTE U950: For $160 you can own a quad core semi-flagship smartphone”
Google was supposed to host an event in New York City today to show off the new LG Nexus 4, the Samsung made Nexus 10, Android 4.2, and a few other cool things, but they’ve just announced that the event has been cancelled. In case you haven’t been keeping up with the news, the biggest storm America’s east coast has ever seen is set to hit several states during the next 48 hours. Over 375,000 people have already been evacuated from Manhattan, the New York Stock exchange has shut down, the public transportation has been turned off, basically the city is preparing for the worst. We hope our American readers stay safe! Continue reading “Google has cancelled today’s Android event due to bad weather”
Microsoft is going to show off Windows Phone 8 later today at an event in California. One of the first devices to hit the market that’ll run that OS will be Nokia’s flagship Lumia 920. It’s the first smartphone to feature optical image stabilization, which should deliver ultra high quality blur free photos. It’s also one of the first devices to ship with a touch screen that works even when you have gloves on, something that’s important in Nokia’s home country of Finland. Speaking about Finland, one of the largest consumer electronic store chains in the country, Verkkokauppa, has just announced when they’ll start selling the Lumia 920. According to their weekly circular, there’s going to be a launch event on November 22nd at 00:01. It’ll cost 599 Euros, which is the same price that they’ll also be selling HTC’s Windows Phone 8X. Continue reading “The Nokia Lumia 920 gets a price and launch date in Finland”
HTC’s 2012 flagship device, the quad core One X, is now getting upgraded to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean according to reports from Android and Me. The updates weighs in at just over 350 MB, so you’re going to want to make sure you’re connected to a high speed WiFi network. Besides Android 4.1, there’s also the latest version of Sense, which comes with an “infinite” number of home screens, the ability to password protect your SMS inbox, and small tweaks here and there that allegedly make the device 10% faster. Continue reading “HTC starts pushing out Android 4.1 to the One X in Europe and Asia”
Lenovo is a company that most people associate with personal computers. It’s easy to see why. They purchased IBM’s computer business in 2005 and quickly started overtaking competitors such as Dell and HP. Today they’re the world’s largest PC maker and we’d even go far as to say that they make the best PCs (Apple’s portfolio not included) on the market. But there’s a small problem. The world isn’t as hungry for personal computers as it once was. PC sales are actually declining, down over 8% year on year according to the research firm Gartner. Windows 8 might fix things, but people seem to be quite scared of Microsoft’s new tile based user interface and the high learning curve it demands. Continue reading “Lenovo to enter the Indian smartphone market next month with 5 to 8 Android handsets”
Wireless charging is something that mobile phone makers have been trying to popularize for years. Palm tried it with the Pre back in 2009, and now Nokia is going to try it next month with the Lumia 920. What sort of problems come with making devices able to charge without wires? The most obvious issue is the high cost of the chargers themselves. Nokia’s Lumia 920, despite supporting wireless charging out of the box, is going to come with a wired charger in the retail packaging. The company’s cheapest wireless charger will run you approximately 70 EUR ($90) in Finland. Continue reading “Samsung begins mass producing wireless charging components”
The guys over at All About Windows Phone are reporting that the number of applications in the Windows Phone Marketplace has surpassed 125,000. They keep track of this data using a tracking service that was developed in-house. Here are the specific numbers you should know: It took 20 months for 126,250 apps to be published. That’s faster than Android, which hit the same number in 26 months, but slower than iOS, which took 18.5 months. A total of 113,000+ apps are actually available for download, meaning some apps are either embargoed or have been pulled. Back in May, 8% of the apps in the UK Marketplace had 5 or more ratings. Today that number has dropped to 7.8%. In the US it’s the opposite, with 12% of apps getting 5 or more ratings in May, but now it’s 13.8%. How many developers have submitted apps to the Marketplace? Over 30,000. Continue reading “There are now over 125,000 Windows Phone apps, growth seems to be slowing down”
Samsung’s Galaxy S III is arguably the best Android phone on the market right now. Some of you might disagree and say the Note II deserves to wear that crown, but whatever, either way Samsung is dominating. The South Korean handset vendor has just uploaded three new 30 second ads to YouTube that demo some of the GS3’s features. In the first video, dubbed “Game On”, an iPhone user and a GS3 user are sitting together on a bench playing a game. The iPhone owner is struggling because his screen makes it difficult to control the videogame. The GS3 owner on the other hand … you get the idea. Continue reading “Videos: Samsung’s new Galaxy S III ads promote NFC and the phone’s large screen”
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institue of Technology have figured out how to re-architecture IP networks in order to increase data speeds by at lest an order of magnitude. Details of how they did it exactly are still somewhat confidential thanks to a non disclosure agreement, but here’s the basic idea: Today’s networks, whether they’re wired or wireless, transmit data in what’s known as a packet. Not all packets gets sent successfully, so the network often has to resend those dropped packets. This is called packet loss and it causes network congestion. These kids said to themselves why are we sending packets in the first place? Why aren’t we sending formulas that describe a series of packets? Sending the mathematical representation of a bunch of packets is not only less intensive, but if one of these so called “coded TCP” packets is lost, then simple math can be done to figure out what was missing. Continue reading “Researchers at MIT use math to increase wireless data speeds by an order of magnitude”
In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft is going to launch a brand new version of Windows on Friday called Windows 8. It doesn’t look anything like Windows 7, and that has some people scared, while others are jumping for joy that Microsoft is finally moving forward in terms of design. Regardless of what you think about the software giant, one thing is certain: Over the next few months you’re going to be absolutely flooded with advertising for this new operating system. Four videos were just posted to the official Windows Blog that give us a taste of what we can expect. Continue reading “Videos: Here are the ads Microsoft is going to run around the world for Windows 8”
According to a breaking news report from Reuters, Samsung just won a court case in the Netherlands regarding multitouch patents that Apple says were being violated. The exact quote from the court ruling reads: “With these products Samsung does not infringe the claims that Apple has made.” Continue reading “Dutch court rules in Samsung’s favor regarding Apple’s multitouch patents”
Some people buy smartphones because they want to have a device that excels at a particular set of features. Other people buy smartphones because they’re a part of some cult. You know the kind of people we’re talking about. The iPhone fanbois, the Android fanatics, the Nokia people who will steal your first born child if you happen to say something even remotely negative about the Finnish handset maker. We don’t know why people go to such extremes to defend their smartphone purchase, but whatever, it’s not like we can do anything to fix their sick and demented minds. What we can do however is laugh at them. The video below is called “Shit Android fanatics say”. It runs through something you’ve likely heard from an individual who is more concerning about playing with their Android device than taking a shower. It’s funny, it’s short, it’s worth a watch. Continue reading “Video: ‘Shit Android fanatics say’ does a hilarious job at making fun of Android fanbois”
According to multiple leaks that have been cataloged by GSMArena, it looks like Sony is working on a new smartphone scheduled to be launched 2013 that will have a 5 inch 1080p display. This device, which has two names depending on the country it’ll launch in, the C660X ‘Yuga’ and the C650X ‘Odin’, has been seen in the NenaMark2 database. Translation: Some Sony engineer with a prototype of this as yet to be unveiled smartphone wanted to see how fast it was, so they ran a benchmark and accidentally uploaded the results to the internet. The actual benchmark that was done has already been removed from the database, but the damage has been done already. Continue reading “Rumor: Sony working on a 5 inch 1080p smartphone”
