Android Authority |
- Sony Xperia L gets detailed some more, has 4.3-inch display and 8 MP camera
- Here are four screenshots showing the GS4′s eye and head tracking features
- News Corp. intros educational 10-inch Amplify Android-based tablet
- HTC Sense 5 wallpapers now available for download online
- HTC’s February numbers are in, they haven’t made this little money in 3 years
- HTC One expected in stock come March 14 in the UK
- Google celebrates Play Store’s 1st birthday with massive week-long sale
- Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy S3 gets Android 4.1.2 update
- TweetDeck for Android being shutdown as team focuses on web app
- ZTE to deepen their relationship with Intel, plans to use the Atom Z2580 this year
| Sony Xperia L gets detailed some more, has 4.3-inch display and 8 MP camera Posted: 06 Mar 2013 02:48 AM PST
With only two phone launches in the first couple of months of 2013, Sony's alphabet soup was starting to get stale. Fortunately, the Xperia makers seem to have caught that right on time and are now prepping to add some spices with a new L. Irony and bad food puns aside, the Xperia L is said to be in the works, but it looks fairly unexciting. Initially thought to be coming with a 4-inch display in tow, the L is now rumored to be a slightly bigger 4.3-incher. Unfortunately, the previously speculated 854 x 480 pixels resolution is almost set in stone, so, again, pretty unexciting. As is the 1 GHz dual-core processor (most likely a Snapdragon S4 Plus unit), the Adreno 305 GPU and 8 GB of on-board storage. As for the 1,700 mAh battery, that sounds truly pitiful even for what is shaping up to be a budget mid-ranger. On the flip side, the 8 MP camera packed with an Exmor RS sensor could be unexpectedly delicious, while the running of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean is also nice though fairly standard already. In a nutshell, the Xperia L (aka C2104, C2105 or "TaoShan") will probably be a slightly bumped up J. Which, for once, would actually be a logical move from Sony. You know, given L is two letters after J in the alphabet. And you'd expect in such a naming scheme to see the low-enders at the beginning (like the E, for instance) and the top-tier devices towards the end (the Z and ZL). But what comes after Z? No idea, but getting back to the L for an instance we have to mention the dimensions of the phone have also leaked. These are said to be 128.7 x 65 x 9.7 mm. Which would make the L a whole mm thinner than last year's 4.3-inch Xperia S. Not bad! Naturally, there’s still no word on pricing or release dates, but expect the L to be unveiled next to the higher end SP. Probably sometime this month, but that’s just a guess. Anyone interested? The post Sony Xperia L gets detailed some more, has 4.3-inch display and 8 MP camera appeared first on Android Authority. |
| Here are four screenshots showing the GS4′s eye and head tracking features Posted: 06 Mar 2013 02:07 AM PST
Samsung’s Galaxy S4 is due to be announced in a little over a week. That means the rumor mill is going to be spinning non-stop at a furious pace for the next eight days or so. I got punked earlier this week by @evleaks, apologies for that, but this next leaks seems a bit more legit. Someone who doesn’t want to identify themselves for obvious reasons sent the folks at SamMobile four screenshots that show off the eye tracking and head tracking features in the GS4. I’m only going to embed one screenshot, but you get the idea.  It appears that the eye tracking will enable automatic scrolling for certain applications, meaning it’s not a system wide feature. Chrome looks to be supported, as well as both the Gmail and Email apps, but that’s all we can tell. And as for head tracking, it looks like the GS4 will pause videos if you turn your head away. All of this sounds really neat, but it’s going to be all about the execution. And in case you haven’t noticed, it looks like TouchWiz hasn’t changed. At all. We’re quite shocked by that, but at the same time we’re not all that surprised. Samsung would rather spend their money adding features upon features to their devices instead of improving their theme. But hey, you never know, maybe Samsung is keeping Nature UX 2.0 a secret as well as they’re keeping the GS4 a secret? What else do we know about the GS4? The screen will measure 4.99 inches diagnol and do 1080p, the camera will be a 13 megapixel part, and the Exynos 5 Octa will be inside the belly of the beast. That’s it. Anything anyone else tells you is just bunk. The post Here are four screenshots showing the GS4′s eye and head tracking features appeared first on Android Authority. |
| News Corp. intros educational 10-inch Amplify Android-based tablet Posted: 06 Mar 2013 02:07 AM PST
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is probably known to many of you for the huge phone hacking scandal that made the headlines for the past couple of years. But what if I were to tell you that the multibillion dollar business is ready to give back to society in the form of an educational tablet? Surprised? I know I am, especially looking at the tab. Unlike similar school-oriented gadgets manufactured in the past, like the Indian government's Aakash and Aakash 2, the Amplify tablet doesn't seem to come with clunky hardware or outdated software. Instead, the thing is described as "similar to the Asus Transformer Pad TF300TL", meaning it sports a 10-inch IPS screen and packs a quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 1 GB of RAM (probably) and a battery capable of providing up to 8.5 hours of continuous use. The software is based on Android Jelly Bean, but it's severely tweaked to serve educational purposes. Usually, that would mean a very rudimentary UI, a lot of "academic" bloatware and some ridiculous "educational" little games, but not this time. The user interface takes a lot of cues from the Holo Launcher, while the video demo below seems to show off a very smooth OS, easy to control and master for both teachers and students. You do get a lot of pre-loaded academic content and special apps, but most of them look useful, engaging and fun. Teachers can share content with the entire class or differentiate the materials based on what each student needs to work on to improve, while blocking and unblocking specific features and apps looks like a piece of cake. Homework can also look fun on Amplify and not in a dumbing down the subjects kind of way. Meanwhile, teachers can build custom lessons with the tab, take attendance in a matter of seconds and monitor the activity of each student without having to keep a direct eye on all of them. And now for the catch. What, you really thought News Corp. was not expecting a profit here? Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi only tab will apparently cost $299 with a mandatory two-year subscription to Amplify's services (an additional $99 a year). There's also going to be an LTE version made available soon, but for $349 plus a $179 a year subscription. The tablet really looks great and all, but only schools with very deep pockets will be able to afford it, so it’s not exactly about giving back, eh, Rupert Murdoch? Oh, well, at least some private schools will acquire it and it’s not like the students admitted there will already have access to the latest technology and the best learning methods. Oh, wait… The post News Corp. intros educational 10-inch Amplify Android-based tablet appeared first on Android Authority. |
| HTC Sense 5 wallpapers now available for download online Posted: 06 Mar 2013 01:57 AM PST
Some of these wallpapers look like abstract paintings, while others are just simple patterns that use great colors which make them more than usable as tiled background screens. There are also a couple of black and white photographs, which seem to jump at you the firs time you look at them. In any case, words are simply not enough to describe the entirety of these wallpapers, so go ahead and just download them to see for yourself.           To download the HTC Sense 5 wallpapers, just right click on the photos and click “Save As.” Or as an alternative, do a long press on the photos if you’re on a mobile device. The post HTC Sense 5 wallpapers now available for download online appeared first on Android Authority. |
| HTC’s February numbers are in, they haven’t made this little money in 3 years Posted: 06 Mar 2013 01:13 AM PST
HTC has just published their February 2013 revenue numbers. Actually, it’s just one number: $11.37 billion Taiwanese dollars, which translates to about $384 million. That’s an incredible 44% less than the same month one year ago, and it’s 27% less than revenues for January 2013. According to The Next Web, the last time HTC made this little money during one month was February 2010, exactly three years ago. This is bad. Really bad. To provide some additional context, most of HTC’s sales are in Asia. Do you know what takes place every February? Chinese New Year. This writer was in Taiwan last month, and he can report that it was an absolutely insane experience. Gift giving is a critical component of the culture, and many highly sought after consumer electronic items were simply out of stock. Did people know about the upcoming HTC One and simply decide to delay their smartphone purchase? We’ll find out in April, when HTC reports their March figures. But to be perfectly honest with you, we think HTC has simply lost their way. The One, regardless of how good it might be, will starve for attention once Samsung starts marketing the Galaxy S4. Maybe HTC has something up their sleeve that they’ve yet to show off? We can only hope. What else is there to say at this point? HTC should be studied by everyone in the mobile industry, because they make great products, yet the company is losing money left and right. Why? When you stop and think about it, HTC doesn’t really do anything other than put together other people’s components. They don’t make their own screens, their own chips, their own batteries, anything really. Meanwhile, Samsung depends on their own factories for pretty much their entire portfolio. Yes, there are several Braodcom powered Galaxy phones out there, but the bleeding edge stuff, the high margin high end devices, those contain a fair amount of Samsung parts. The post HTC’s February numbers are in, they haven’t made this little money in 3 years appeared first on Android Authority. |
| HTC One expected in stock come March 14 in the UK Posted: 06 Mar 2013 12:59 AM PST
HTC was initially pretty vague on One's official release date, but the pieces of the puzzle fell into place one by one in the past couple of weeks. The 4.7-incher is now expected on March 7 in Taiwan, starting on the 15th in the UK, a couple of days later in the rest of Europe and on the 22nd in America. Actually, scratch that British launch date, because it seems at least one particular retailer in the country might ship the One early – Expansys. The new ETA is March 14, so only a day early, but this is definitely news considering what will go down on the same day halfway around the world. That's right, just as the first HTC One pre-orders will be fulfilled, New York City will be hosting the debut of Samsung's Galaxy S4 (we’ll be there, by the way). We already figured something in the grand scheme of One's release had to overlap with the GS4 intro, but is it really smart of HTC to try stealing the spotlight of this year's most anticipated Android smartphone this way?
No, but then again this is probably all on Expansys. As far as we know, the rest of the British retailers and carriers are still planning to put the One up for grabs on March 15 (at the earliest). That will still be fresh after the S4 unveiling, but maybe it'll all be a good thing for HTC. After all, Sammy's new spearhead can't please everybody, so whoever will end up disappointed with the S4 will most likely jump on the One bandwagon. How about you, are you on the S4, One team or still undecided? The post HTC One expected in stock come March 14 in the UK appeared first on Android Authority. |
| Google celebrates Play Store’s 1st birthday with massive week-long sale Posted: 06 Mar 2013 12:49 AM PST
To kick off this week-long Google Play Store birthday celebration, Google has started offering Android users gift cards, exclusive in-app content, limited-time deals, and huge discounts on apps. If you make your way to the Google Play Store right now, you’ll find that some games now feature new exclusive characters, and that you can also get special deals on books, movies, music, and magazines. And if you don’t find anything that you think is worth spending on, don’t worry. As mentioned earlier, the Google Play Store’s 1st birthday celebration lasts all week long. And the deals and discounts will be updated every day of the week. So hold on to your wallets and keep an eye out for those exclusive offers until something you fancy comes along. The post Google celebrates Play Store’s 1st birthday with massive week-long sale appeared first on Android Authority. |
| Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy S3 gets Android 4.1.2 update Posted: 06 Mar 2013 12:04 AM PST
Three months after Android 4.1 came to Verizon's Samsung Galaxy S3, the carrier is now rolling out a newer version of Jelly Bean to the phone, a different build than the one that leaked in early February. You should be getting an OTA update soon — if you’re lucky — that will bring your Galaxy S3 to Android 4.1.2. The VRBMB1 build is about 150MB in file size, and for those who are wondering, here's the full change log:
Granted, it's not the major update that you've probably been waiting for. Think of it as a starter meal before Verizon takes you to the grand feast that is Android 4.2 and beyond. Let us know below if you've received the Android 4.1.2 update on your device. The post Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy S3 gets Android 4.1.2 update appeared first on Android Authority. |
| TweetDeck for Android being shutdown as team focuses on web app Posted: 05 Mar 2013 11:14 PM PST
TweetDeck was a brilliant multi-platform, multi-account social networking suite that worked on the desktop and on smartphones. In fact, it was so good that Twitter bought it for $40 million back in May 2011. From that moment it was inevitable that the apps were doomed. Twitter already had apps for mobile and wants people to use the web to access its service from the desktop. It didn’t need a second set of mobile apps nor a desktop program. According to the TweetDeck team they want to focus on developing a modern, web-based version of TweetDeck and are therefore discontinuing support TweetDeck for Android, TweetDeck AIR and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will all be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop working from then on. Any remaining users of TweekDeck for Android should get used to using another Twitter app from today onwards as the team also announced that with the retirement of Twitter’s v1.0 API, the engineers at Twitter will be performing occasional tests that will cause some outages even before the TweetDeck apps are discontinued. So basically it will become unreliable as from now. The blog post by the TweetDeck team also mentions that it will discontinue support for Facebook integration which, since the two social networks are rivals, was inevitable! The post TweetDeck for Android being shutdown as team focuses on web app appeared first on Android Authority. |
| ZTE to deepen their relationship with Intel, plans to use the Atom Z2580 this year Posted: 05 Mar 2013 10:16 PM PST
ZTE is such a dirty girl. They’ll do business with just about anyone, as long as they get some sort of preferential treatment. ZTE was the one and only company to ship a phone using an NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Icera modem. They were also one of the first companies to announce a Tegra 3 phone. And recently they said they’ll be the first handset maker to launch a phone using the Tegra 4. Forgetting about NVIDIA for a second, just last month they announced that the ZTE Grand Memo will be the first device to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. See where we’re going with this? Yesterday ZTE made yet another announcement. They’ve signed an agreement with Intel to make a phone using the Atom Z2580. What exactly is so special about that chip? It’s a dual core processor, with each core having HyperThreading support, so Android is going to see it as “four” cores. It also has a wicked fast graphics processor, the PowerVR SGX 544MP2. There’s even an integrated HSPA+ modem that can hit a theoretical 42 Mbps. So this as yet to be named phone will be fast, but will it stand out from the crowd? The answer is probably not, which isn’t too surprising. ZTE is known more in emerging economies, but even there they fall behind their Chinese cousins Huawei and Lenovo. We’d love to be proven wrong though, and have this Intel powered ZTE phone be the coolest thing since sliced bread, but we’re not going to hold our breath. Recommended Reading: Intel’s Clover Trail+: Dual-Core CPU and Graphics Unveiled at MWC The post ZTE to deepen their relationship with Intel, plans to use the Atom Z2580 this year appeared first on Android Authority. |
As Agent Smith said so succinctly in The Matrix, “It is inevitable.” That is really the only response to the news that Twitter will close TweetDeck for Android, along with TweetDeck AIR and TweetDeck for iPhone, in May.
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