Hasta La Gadget!

While hardware specs and built-in features are important when it comes to smartphones, just as important are the apps available for your chosen platform. After all a phone with the most powerful hardware specs but lacking in apps might be passed up for a less powerful device with a bevy of apps to choose from. Well if you liked the recently revealed Windows Phone 8 handsets by Nokia and HTC and were thinking about hopping about the Windows Phone 8 bandwagon, you might be interested to learn that the Windows Phone Marketplace has published over 126,000 apps to date. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Lomogram could be a Windows Phone alternative to Instagram, Bloomberg app a Nokia Lumia exclusive,

Amazon has confirmed it’s using LOVEFiLM, the movie rental company it acquired at the start of 2011, to power the video service in Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD tablets sold in the U.K.. The slates go on sale in the U.K. today and Amazon is offering Fire buyers a one month free trial of LOVEFiLM.

Earlier this month LOVEFiLM added the ability to sign in with an Amazon account – a precursor to the service being “deeply integrated” into the Fire tablets. As well as streaming movies and TV shows from the thousands in LOVEFiLM’s catalogue, the Kindle Fire LOVEFiLM integration supports watch lists, for creating movie and TV playlists, and the IMDb-powered Amazon X-Ray for Movies feature which lets Fire users look up information about actors — such as biog details and photos — without leaving the film.

The LOVEFiLM Pause and Resume function is powered by Amazon’s multi-platform viewing Whispersync technology.

Even closer service integration is coming “in the near future”, with Amazon noting that existing LOVEFiLM members will be able to link their Amazon and LOVEFiLM accounts together with a single sign in soon.

We’re just a few days away from Microsoft‘s big Windows Phone 8 launch event, and today we’re receiving a bit of encouraging news about the Windows Phone Marketplace. All About Windows Phone has announced that the Windows Phone Marketplace has passed the 125,000 apps milestone, with a total of 126,530 apps being published to the marketplace in the past 20 months. It’s important to keep in mind that these aren’t official numbers from Microsoft, but All About Windows Phone has been right on the money when talking about published Marketplace apps plenty of times in the past.

Of those 126,530 apps, 113,170 of them are available for download in any combination of 60 different countries, while 101,517 are live in the US. The UK isn’t far behind the US, with 96,265 apps live on its own app store, and France rounds out the top three with a total of 92,887 apps on its Windows Phone Marketplace. That 126,530 figure means that around 215 apps are being published to the Windows Phone Marketplace per day, which certainly isn’t bad.

The number of developers has been steadily climbing too, with a total of 30,000 developers publishing an app on the Windows Phone Marketplace at some point in time. Windows Phone managed to hit the 125,000 milestone faster than Android, which took 26 months to get there, but iOS ultimately came out on top in the race to 125,000 apps, taking only 18.5 months to reach the milestone. That has to be pretty encouraging, but then there’s still the fact that the Windows Phone Marketplace lags pretty far behind the Google Play Store and the iOS App Store in terms total published apps.

Unfortunately for Windows Phone users, AAWP says that the rate at which apps are being published to the Windows Phone Marketplace has slowed down in recent months. This is likely because developers are preparing for the launch of Windows Phone 8. If you have a few minutes on hand, be sure to read through AAWP’s full report, as it’s a very interesting piece!

Windows Phone Marketplace surpasses 125,000 apps milestone is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

TecTile updated to version 3.0 today, and it brings a lot of new features and includes various enhancements that allow for better customization that NFC junkies will love. If you’re not familiar with Samsung‘s TecTile app, it’s a proprietary application for Samsung devices that lets users write and re-write different activities to NFC tags.

Users can now add different profiles to TecTile, meaning that you can allow custom settings for various situations like work, home, night, etc., and each of which can be activated (and deactivated) using NFC. As an example, if you want your phone to be on different settings when you’re at work, you can assign it to a “work” profile, and then write it to an NFC tag. As soon as you tap the tag, the profile is activated.

The update also includes assigning multiple actions to a single tag, which compliments the aforementioned profiles feature. With a single tag, you can trigger things like silent mode, full brightness, and disable WiFi all at once. This is probably the most convenient feature included in the update, since a lot of users end up wanting to change multiple settings all the time.

Aside from those features, the update also brings stored tag history (for reference on older tags that you made in the past), support for private tags (so that only your phone can read them), and the ability to unlock a previously locked TecTile tag. TecTile 3.0 is a free download and the update is available now in the Google Play store.

Samsung TecTile 3.0 update offers even more NFC capabilities is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The other day we reported that thanks to a leaked ad, Borderlands Legends for iOS was revealed. Well the good news is that if you were looking to play Borderlands on your iOS device, Gearbox has officially announced the game and it will be arriving in the iTunes App Store come 31^st of October. However instead of the first person perspective that Borderlands gamers have been used to, Borderlands Legends for iOS will be a top-down action role-playing game instead. As the ad had revealed, gamers will be able to partake in randomized missions and play as some of Borderlands’ characters, such as Brick, Lilith, Mordecai and Roland, while encountering familiar enemies. Players will be able to level their characters as well as purchase guns and gear that will help you progress in the game. The game will be priced at $4.99 for the iPhone, and $6.99 for the iPad. So, who’s excited for Borderlands Legends?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Borderlands Legends for iOS revealed in leaked ad, Rovio and McDonald’s China to launch location-based Angry Birds game,