Above is a high quality press render of the Nexus 5 which is soon to be announced by Google. No surprises on the hardware front, but details of the full package on offer cannot come quick enough.
Update – Google by accident put the N5 up on the Play Store. $349 for the 16gb version. Looks like a bargain already.
Sony is pushing over the air updates to its Z1 and Z Ultra. These are quite important updates so you may want to request the software update from within the system settings l.
With the Z1 the upgrade brings several camera tweaks and new camera algorithms for better all round performance. There have also been some changes to the Sony smart camera platform, which now enables built-in apps to run more fluidly.
The Xperia Z Ultra update brings optimized touchscreen sensitivity for fingers and styluses, therefore, effectively broadening the range of input methods, empowering the device to compete with the likes of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy Note III.
In addition, both the Z1 and Z Ultra will receive battery life enhancements, display calibration tweaks and significantly faster e-mail synchronisation over Microsoft Exchange.
Sounds like very good updates.
That great TV app, TVCatchup that provided live TV on your iPhone or android phone has lost a legal case.
This means ITV1-4, Channel 4, Channel 5, E4, More 4, 4 Seven, Five Star, Film Four, Four Music, and CITV are no longer available via the app.
Reuters FRANKFURT (www.reuters.com) reported the following on Huawei.
China’s Huawei, one of the world’s largest telecoms network infrastructure providers, is not planning any large takeovers because it would be unable to integrate them, Deputy Chairman Guo Ping was reported as saying in German paper Welt am Sonntag.
Ping, one of three deputy chairmen who take turns acting as chief executive, was responding to the paper’s question on whether he could imagine buying one of Europe’s big players in the sector, such as Nokia or Alcatel-Lucent.
Huawei, which is also one of the world’s leading handset manufacturers, last month ruled out the possibility of buying another mobile phone maker. However, Ping said that it would be open to cooperation with another handest company, the paper reported.
Ping also rejected allegations from the U.S. Congress that technology from Huawei might be used to spy on its users and denied accusations by the European Commission that it would dump goods on the market at artificially low prices.
Whenever a company denies something like this, it means they probably are looking at options. But apart from looking at the options, they are also looking at the cost of such an acquisition, politics and implementation.
Huawei might also believe they don’t need anybody else as they are starting to release some fine craft.
As of Monday, Mixpanel reported that 71% of iOS devices were already using iOS 7.
If Apple can keep it hardware updated at this rate, its time Google, Microsoft and others stepped up their game too.
A few days ago I wrote about my early days with the Netatmo Urban Weather Station. To recap on the earlier part click here.
The Netatmo Urban Weather Station has apps for iOS, Windows Phone and android. Below is a couple of screen shots from the iOS app.
But it also has a PC web app. I will write a more complete review soon but I thought I would show you the view you get when using the PC web app for the first time.
I have since discovered that there are some third party apps that works with the Weather Station. First is WeatherPro for iOS. Baratmo for Mac OS. And for those android fans, there is also a widget with the official app.
Screenshot of Baratmo – with this all you get is an icon in the status bar. Click on this and the following pops up as below.
With WeatherPro you can fully integrate the Urban Weather Station into the app. First it appears in the list of favourites.
And then you can tap on it to get more detailed info as shown below. You can scroll down for even more info, or hit the top right bar chart info to get specific graphs on an individual item of weather, similar to the Netatmo official app.
So what do you think of the data available?
On Monday I wrote about networks altering the speed of 3G data to make 4G look more attractive and try and sign up more users to these new plans.
Blog reader Jah managed to find out the following –
“I managed to get T-Mobile to confirm that they now limit download speeds on their 3G network to around 4mbps (but in Bristol I found I can still get 10mbps for some reason). My 4G SIM in the same area as my 3G SIM on the same 3G network can download at 20mpbs! So EE/T-mobile actually set limits for 3G.”
So I am several weeks in with my iPhone 5S and it is clear that iOS simply has a superb range of depth and breadth of apps across a much wider spectrum.
As an example on my iPhone 5S I have the following photography apps –
iPhoto, Photogene, Snapspeed, Diptic, Diptic PDQ, AutoStitch, Flickr, Camera360, ColorSplash, Phoster, Camera+, DMD Panorama, SloPro, VSCOcam and PhotoFusion.
I own other photography apps too. Overall I am really pleased with the versatility and choice, plus quality of these apps.
So do you have a hobby, and find your platform has a decent selection of app(s)? If so, please share below in the comments.
I have 3 colours of the Apple Leather case for the iPhone 5S. I did have the yellow colour but I had to return that within a few days due to it getting dirty.
I currently have the cream, blue and brown colours, but even though the case is kept in either my front shirt or jacket pocket it still seems to be attracting loads of dirt. Brown is my favourite colour.
So how would you recommend keeping these cases clean?
Well it will be magical. Amazing. And Unbelievable. What more do you need to know!
Ok, new iPad 9.7 inch based on the current iPad Mini design, revised iPad Mini 2 with improved internals. Updated software for MAC OS X , called Mavericks. This will increase integration with iDevices and fix a number of bugs.
The Mac Pro could be announced, new Apple TV and game controllers. And expect to see all of the new iPads playing some huge game.
Gavin's Gadgets & Photography 