Hasta La Gadget!

Looking for Samsung’s latest big phone? Get yourself over to Korea, where the Galaxy Note II has kicked off its launch “world tour” with a party in the center of Seoul. The 5.5-inch Jelly Bean superphone will be available across SKT, KT and LG U+ carriers, supporting LTE connectivity on all three, available in 32GB and 64GB storage offerings. The Galaxy Note II will eventually arrive in 128 countries — and we’re expecting a US arrival date sometime in November, on even more carriers than its Korean debut.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Samsung Galaxy Note II launches on three carriers in Korea originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 07:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Play, the company’s Android app store, has passed 25bn downloads, and to celebrate Google is running a series of discounts on top titles over the next week. There are now 675,000 apps and games in the former Android Market, Google says, with downloads jumping from the 1bn point in 2010 to a whopping 25bn today. That calls for some significant discounts to mark the occasion.

Google has roped in Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Rovio, runtastic, Full Fat, and other developers and studios to run some limited-time offers. Titles will be sold for 25 cents, with a new selection every day; the first batch will be added to the store later on today, Google says.

Meanwhile, there’ll be further price cuts in other types of content. Google will be pushing discounted ebooks, movies, and music, with a collection of promotions like “25 movies you must own,” “25 banned books,” and “25 top selling magazines.” They’re not going to go for $0.25 necessarily, but they will apparently be cheaper than usual.

We’ll be keeping an eye out on the market to see when the first promotions go live.

Google Play celebrates 25bn downloads with $0.25 app promo is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Google officially announced that its online store, Google Play, reached the 25 billion downloads mark. And to celebrate the event, the search giant is offering some great discounts for the next five days.

Special collections such as  25 movies you must own, 25 banned books, 25 albums that changed the world and the 25 top selling magazines in Google Play will be offered at discounted prices, and you will be able to buy a few games for 25 cents each.

In case you are still curious about this type of metrics, Google Play now counts over 675,000 apps and games.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: All your Google Maps are belong to us, Android zips past 500 million activations,

Google Play crossed a rather significant milestone this morning: something to the tune of 25 billion app downloads. While the accomplishment is weighty enough on its own — especially given that the store also offers books, music and movies, which aren’t included in this tally — Google is celebrating in symbolic style with a number of apps and games for sale at just $0.25 over the next five days. Among the mix of discounted titles, you’ll find publishers such as Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Runtastic and Full Fat. Not to stop there, shoppers will also discover a curated collection of 25 must-own movies, 25 banned books, 25 albums that changed the world and 25 top-selling magazines.

With today’s announcement, it was revealed that 675,000 apps and games now live in Google Play — a healthy increase when compared to 600,000 titles and 20 billion installs just three months ago. As you might expect, Apple still claims the largest selection with 700,000 titles in its App Store, although with such a thin separation between the two, we may see Google Play eclipse its rival in short order.

Filed under: Software, Mobile

Google Play hits 25 billion app downloads, holds celebratory yard sale with $0.25 games originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RIM is taking a beating on the modern smartphone market and continues to be unable to muster a device to offer any significant competition to Android or the iPhone. The company has fallen from grace massively from the days when it was the most popular smartphone on the market. RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said this week that in the company’s decision to bet it all on the BlackBerry 10 OS would allow the company to grow its user base in the US and North America.

The US and North American markets are where RIM has experienced much of its customer loss. RIM seems to know that at least for now it doesn’t really have a chance of the dethroning the iPhone or Android and is content to aim for third place in the market. I expect Windows Phone 8 has a better chance at taking third-place spot than RIM.

RIM will have to beat Symbian, which sits in the third-place spot currently in the OS ecosystem. According to Heins, developers are eager to build apps for BlackBerry users. Heins didn’t offer any of the information that many people wanted to know about BlackBerry 10 such as when the new devices would be available.

As close as he came to offering details on availability was reiterating that the devices would be coming in Q1 2013. So far, there is no indication on what sort of pricing RIM will demand for BlackBerry 10 devices and what carriers have agreed to offer the smartphones. One key fact that remains unexplained is what exactly will set BlackBerry 10 apart from competing products on the market and make consumers want to purchase BlackBerry smartphones again. Earlier this week, RIM confirmed carrier testing for the BlackBerry 10 operating system would begin next month.

“BlackBerry 10 is on track,” Heins said. “Our sales forces are getting ready. Better devices are in testing.”

[via CNET]

RIM gives it the old junior college try, aims for third place is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
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