Hasta La Gadget!

Almost a week back the very first pictures of a prototype of the much rumored Amazon smartphone were leaked online. Today additional details have been leaked about this smartphone which isn’t expected to be announced for at least a few months. To set its handset apart from the rest Amazon will apparently focus on changing the way we interact with our smartphones. It will reportedly rely upon proprietary cameras and the head-tracking system to make one handed use easier than it is today.

According to BGR the user interface will be influenced by unique tilt-based gestures. It will display additional information when the handset is titled into different directions. For example the email and calendar applications will display labels under each icon to describe their functions when the device is titled. Similarly a tilt gesture will provide quick access to camera roll when a user is composing a text message.

Similar gestures in a maps application would reportedly display Yelp rating for each result. Another given example is Amazon’s IMDB app which would reveal a film rating when a tilt gesture is used.

It sounds like Amazon has effectively eliminated the need for a home button. There is a significant downside nonetheless. Users will have to go through a big learning curve and Amazon would need to make sure that retail personnel are fully trained to teach potential customers.

So far Amazon has not commented on any rumors linking it to a smartphone. It is not yet known for sure if and when it plans on finally launching the device.

Amazon Will Reportedly Change The Way We Interact With Smartphones , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Cellphones, Amazon,

Last year T-Mobile shook things up in the U.S. wireless industry through its “uncarrier” initiatives. Instead of subsidizing phones for customers and making them pay an upfront cost as well as sign a costly two year service contract, T-Mobile now lets them opt for a cheaper service plan and pay for their devices in installments. Other major carriers like AT&T and Verizon responded with similar plans. Data shows that as U.S. customers move towards installment based plans, sales of high-end phone might take a brutal hit due to disappearing subsidies.

Under its new plans AT&T sold 15 percent of all smartphones in the fourth quarter without needing to subsidize the cost. John Hodulik, an analyst at UBS, believes that this number may balloon to 35 percent by the end of this year. Even AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said last month that “the industry is at a place where you can actually see line of sight to the subsidy equation just fundamentally changing in a very short period of time.”

High-end and well performing smartphones like the iPhone will be hit the most. The cheapest 16GB iPhone 5c costs $199 with a two year contract and a whopping $649 without one. Similar devices are already showing signs of strain owing to saturation in the high-end market.

This may very well give a boost to mid-range devices which are priced around $200-$350 off contract. Oppenheimer analyst Tim Horan tells the Wall Street Journal that disappearing subsidies can put more pressure on high-end smartphones and give a boost to cheaper alternatives.

This is why most OEMs offer a variety of devices that cater to different price points. Since Apple doesn’t offer a truly mid-range iPhone, it may seriously have to reconsider its approach in the U.S. market if this trend continues.

Fading Carrier Subsidies May Hit High-End Smartphones , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Cellphones, iPhone,

We know that texting while driving is bad and should be avoided at all costs. There are countless reports about the dangers of tapping away on your smartphone behind the wheel that it really shouldn’t be necessary to hammer this point home every time. Unfortunately there are still a lot of drivers out there that put their lives and the lives of others at risk. There are a lot of apps available that can stop users from texting while driving, and today the USTPO published an Apple patent about technology that can block users from doing just that.

The obvious advantage of this technology would be the fact that it would most likely be baked into iOS. So all compatible devices will get this feature without users having to pay for it. Titled “Driver handheld computing device lock-out” the patent explains a system that can “intelligently” determine whether the user is driving, and when it does, the system shuts off the function.

Apple lists two methods through which the lock-out system can determine if a user is driving. First would rely upon on-board sensors on the device to find out if a user is trying to text behind the wheel. The other method would utilize blocking signals being transmitted from the car to the iOS device.

The existing CarPlay feature can be leveraged to provide blocking signals to the iOS device. This way users won’t be able to access distracting functions like SMS messaging when they’re driving. Hopefully this will make roads safer around the world. Apple hasn’t confirmed as yet if it intends to add this feature in the upcoming major iOS update.

Apple Patents Tech That Can Block Users From Texting While Driving , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Apple, Cellphones, patents, texting,

The HTC One M8 has a pretty interesting accessory in the form of the Dot View cover. What it does is that instead of just covering the phone entirely or opting for a small window like Samsung’s S View cover, it instead features rows and columns of tiny dots in which information can be seen in an 8-bit-like design.

It’s pretty novel and useful if you want to check simple notifications, the time, the weather, and so on. However what if the phone could be hacked in order to allow the case to display even more notifications? Wouldn’t that be pretty cool?

Well hacker Shen Ye has managed to do that and has recently posted a photo of his HTC One M8 with the Dot View case in which the phone is not only able to display the time, but also shows off notifications from Twitter. If you ever wonder what the Twitter mascot would look like in 8-bit, wonder no more.

Unfortunately Shen Ye did not provide more details about the hack, such as whether it will require root access or a hacked APK file, although he did state that since the Sense UI already has access to social networking APIs, it wasn’t that hard to get the Dot View case to show those notifications.

We reckon it’s pretty novel but if you like what you see, hopefully Shen Ye will release a tutorial or how-to on how to achieve that effect with your own HTC One M8.

HTC One M8 Hacked To Allow Dot View Case To Display Additional Notifications , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Cellphones, HTC One (M8),

One of the features of the Samsung Galaxy S5 is its fingerprint scanner. Not only can this scanner be used to secure the device, but it can also be used to authorize PayPal payments, making it a cinch to perform payments and transfers without the need to enter a password. Unfortunately for Verizon’s version of the Galaxy S5, the carrier decided to disable the feature for some unknown reason, but thankfully there’s a way to get it working.

According to a post on the XDA Developers forumm a workaround has been discovered that will allow users to activate the feature on their phone, although we should note that this is an unofficial method so do proceed with caution. There are a couple of steps involved, all of which appear to be pretty straightforward and you don’t really need to be particularly tech savvy in order to get it up and running.

The trick behind the method is to access a hidden Samsung apps store and install the PayPal app and the NNL Fingerprint Passport service, which will then allow you to proceed to register your fingerprint to use with PayPal. Like we said this is unofficial and given that PayPal involves money, we suggest you might want to be a bit careful going about it.

Once again we’re not sure why Verizon has decided to disable fingerprint authorization for PayPal but if you really want the feature, then perhaps this workaround could be worth checking out.

PayPal Fingerprint Authorization For Verizon’s Galaxy S5 Workaround Discovered , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Cellphones, galaxy s5, paypal, Samsung, Verizon,