Samsung and HTC used twitter to slag each other off a few days ago. The below screen shot says it all.
But then LG UK decides to get involved with this tweet –

And if you follow the web page you get to the Nexus and the awards it won!

The above photos are supposedly of the soon to be announced Samsung Galaxy Zoom phone / camera. If the photos are true, then the Zoom is more camera than phone, sort of reminding me of the Nokia Pureview 808.
Question is would you want to have a bulky phone in your pocket, that focused just on the camera but compromised on other aspects? Personally, I love the idea of a decent camera on a phone but I would also want good sound quality and some reassurance of battery life or the ability to be able to swap the battery. I can’t wait for the full official announcement and learn about the full specifications and capability.
Bored of the colour of your Samsung S4, have no fear Colorware are rushing to your rescue. $1,000 and 14 days later you can have your personalised colour choice.
In the ColorWare design studio, there are 46 paint colors to choose from including, solid and metallic, as well as matte and gloss finishes. There are three customizable elements on the Galaxy S4,which provide extensive options for creating a one-of-a-kind smartphone.
The product goes through a laborious process of disassembly, cleaning, masking, painting, and inspection. Then, the product is buffed and reassembled. The product goes through final inspection and then is packaged into the original packaging.
Personally, that’s a very expensive amount of money to blow on a phone but for some it’s a great little touch.
Amazon is the cheapest place to shop. Well it used to be but slowly but surely as it has destroyed its competitors, prices have started to rise. Other factors to be in mind that the more you visit an item, the higher the price will go. So never browse Amazon signed in and if you do browse always delete your cookies first.
However, in line with Amazon destroying its competitors, representatives of Britain’s bookstores have made a plea for help, as they face extinction at the hands of Amazon’s cheaper prices and uncanny ability to avoid paying their fair share of tax.
The Booksellers Association, which represents over 1,000 outlets in the UK, said it needs help from the government to stand up to Amazon’s “relentless expansion” that’s putting shop owners out of business.
The group’s CEO Tim Godfray told the Guardian than one bookshop a week is closing its doors (73 in the last year) and more face the same fate if nothing is done about Amazon’s dominance.
Somehow, I can see this falling on deaf ears, or too little will be done before it becomes too late.
Samsung has lost $12 billion in market value following concern from analysts over slowing sales of the Samsung S4 and Samsung releasing too many different phones that are also impacting sales.
In fact Samsung probably has a phone, Phablet and tablet at every screen size imaginable. It’s range is too vast in my opinion and is causing Samsung to release unfinished buggy top end smartphones.
The drop in Samsung’s market value is the largest drop in a single day by the company.
In less than a month, Google Reader will shut down. However, Feedly has stepped in to offer an alternative.
Feedly has announced partnerships with several RSS app developers including Reeder, Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader, who will move to support the Feedly API before the Google Reader API is deprecated. What that means for end users relying on these apps is that the app makers will be able to seamlessly transition their users to a new backend ahead of Google Reader’s impending shutdown.
This is good news. I personally use Newsify so it is good to hear RSS syncing will carry on regardless of Google closing down its Reader service.
I never saw this coming.
Samsung has released an update for the S4 which improves the camera and other little bugs , but the big feature is that its added back the ability to allow apps to be saved to the micro SD card.
Clearly, all the media pressure and bad PR forced it and Google to do something. Lets hope they don’t remove the feature in a future update.
The update is only for the quad code i9505 variant. The full list of improvements include –
– a camera firmware
– fix for the smearing issue
– a Smart Pause toggle
– the ability to (finally) move Apps to the SD card
– HDR Video
– semi-transparent status bar (a la HTC One)
– new icons inside Settings
– an Increase display legibility (new feature)
– bug fixes
Now apart from the gentle lag, I wonder if Samsung have fixed the audio headphone cracking.
Update – early reports indicate Samsung have fixed the audio cracking. If this is fully confirmed the S4 is finally worthy as a contender to the HTC One.
Update 2 – moving apps to the SD card is NOT as good as it seems. Only the app not app data gets moved. Most large sized apps or games have app data over 1gb. The app itself is not a problem in size normally. Also any apps on the SD card prevent the widgets from working normally. So this fix from Samsung will free up some space but its not as good as it could have been.
Galaxy S4 Active has been announced by Samsung and is almost identical to the Galaxy S4 with a 5-inch Full HD display, 1.9GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, 2MP front camera and 2600mAh battery. The rear camera however is only 8mp which is a shame. The phone also has 3 physical buttons and is water resistant and dust proof.
My thought process is why didn’t Samsung release the S4 as a tougher phone in the first place?
In a surprise move, Google is now offering its standard Google Keyboard in the Play Store.
Google’s Keyboard key features:
• Gesture Typing with dynamic floating preview
• Voice Typing
• Next-word suggestions and current-word completions
• Dictionaries for 26 languages
• Advanced keyboard layouts
• Works across your Android devices (tablets and phones)