Category Archives: Tech News

Analysts strike Samsung the same way the hit Apple

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.

Google Reader shutdown is less than a month away- here are some options

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.

Samsung S4 update allows for apps to be moved to the micro SD card! – But it’s not all roses

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.

WWDC – Apple is set to take the world by storm

Next week Apple will be holding its WWWDC. The key excitement lies around what iOS 7 will look like and reveal. This is the work of Mr Ive. And according to the man himself, it will be the best mobile operating system when launched.
WWDC

The banner for WWDC is in place, and it reveals the type of icon style we might expect to see next week. Or are the colours indicating something else, something hardware related?

What do you think?

Personally, 10th June cannot come soon enough.

Samsung S4 Active officially announced

GalaxyS4Active-Press-02-580-75

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?

Google brings it Google Keyboard to the Play Store

In a surprise move, Google is now offering its standard Google Keyboard in the Play Store.

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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)

iOS 7, iRadio and Apple WWDC

In 5 days time, Apple will be commencing its WWDC.

Rumours floating around the Internet at the moment suggest Apple is ready to launch its streaming music/radio service at WWDC.

iOS 7 is meant to be a more flattened design. I noticed that the official Apple WWDC app, featured a flat icon and this surely is a clue of what the rest of the icons will look like. The notification centre on the iPhone will also get a slight makeover with some extra options.

Other rumours suggest Apple will announce wifi sharing with the iPhone range, new Macs and potentially the iPhone 5S.

However, apart from the visual makeover and a number of new features, I don’t expect iOS 7 to be a night and day difference from iOS 6. Why? iOS 6 is already polished. So to make it substantially different would be impossible.