With Nokia accidentally outing its Lumia 928 yesterday prior to its expected unveiling on May 14, we’re not sure what else the company has up its sleeves, but it has announced a global event that will take place this Thursday.
Nokia sent out an invite to its scheduled global event which was accompanied by an image of what looks to be an oval along with a yellow background and the message asking if customers are ready to “add some color to your week?” Nokia will be making its announcement in New Delhi at 12 p.m. local time, which is around 3 a.m. ET and 12 a.m. PT, which leads us to believe its “global announcement” will have something to do with the Indian market, but the company could certainly be teasing additional colors of an already released handset.
For those who will be awake at the time Nokia makes their announcement in New Delhi, you can watch the action live from the company’s Conversations page where a webcast can be viewed.
Why are Virgin America, Target, Bank of America, CBS Interactive and other top execs from leading companies going to Under the Radar? Because the speed of technology creates new opportunities and new problems for leading enterprises. Startups presenting at Under the Radar all address a particular problem in today’s tech world, from BYOD security to hiring methods, marketing, big data and cloud performance.
Below is a sampling of the presenting companies and the executives who will be judging them at the upcoming Under the Radar Conference in San Francisco. The event will be May 22-23 at the Mission Bay Conference Center.
Get a ticket through Ubergizmo up to $300 off the door price by using “ubergizmo” in the promo code box. http://bit.ly/YiO9tQ
Just minutes ago SlashGear announced the on-sale marker for Apple’s developer conference WWDC 2013 – now they’re all sold out. Having literally hit refresh ourselves from the moment the tickets went on sale, it’s appearing from here that Apple sold tickets out from start to finish in under 2 minutes. You’ll find sources across the web suggesting 3 minutes and even 1 minute – stay tuned for official word from Apple as well.
This sale is a record, one way or another. Back in 2012 tickets sold out in right around two hours after they went on sale, that time working with an on-sale time that wasn’t announced in advance. The same situation occurred in 2011 where ticket sales took around 12 hours.
Here in 2013, the release of tickets was pre-announced and pinpointed for Apple developers, this allowing the masses to be on-point with clicks and credit cards. This event should prove to be an important one in Apple’s history as it will reveal not only a new iteration of their desktop operating system, but their mobile operating system as well, both of them with new leadership behind the scenes.
Have a peek at our still short history with WWDC 2013 in the timeline below and prepare for the big set of events starting on June 10th and lasting until the 14th of June, 2013. We’ll be live in-effect from start to finish, especially in regards to the major keynotes which have in the past proven themselves to be significant moments in the Apple road of events.
Apple’s developer conference has been announced earlier this week and tickets for the event are on sale now. This event will take place at the Moscone Center as it has for several years and may well play host to a set of new devices in addition to software pushes for both mobile and desktop Apple environments. This event has in the past been home to reveals of devices such as the Retina display-toting MacBook Pro and the Apple iPhone 4.
Tickets for WWDC are set for official Apple developers and will cost a cool $1,599 apiece. This event’s tickets are a sure sell-out, it’s only a matter of how long they’ll take to reach that moment of unavailability. Tickets have gone on sale at 10AM PST, just a moment ago, and we’ll be watching closely to see how long they take to actually reach their final state.
This event has been promised by Tim Cook to contain new versions of both Apple’s desktop OS and the iPhone/iPad operating systme iOS as well. With the company’s Design Awards, top apps in iPhone, iPad, and Mac are showcased from third-party developers that then go on to sell millions of copies – if they’re lucky. WWDC 2013 will be home to more than 1,000 developers while Apple runs the show from several stages and meeting rooms.
Have a peek at our recent coverage of WWDC and stay tuned as we cover the event straight from San Francisco through our own WWDC 2013 portal!
Nokia is preparing to unveil what looks to be the company’s next Lumia smartphone during an event that they will host on May 14 in London. If recent rumors are on track, it could be the EOS that we’ve been hearing a lot about, which is said to be a Windows Phone device that packs in a PureView 41-megapixel camera.
The invite reads, “The Nokia Lumia story continues,” and to the left it reads, “See what’s next” in big bold letters that are slightly hidden, almost like a stereogram. We’re not sure what that specifically is all about, but we do know from the invite that Nokia will be showing off a new Lumia device at the event.
We’ve heard that the new smartphone will sport an aluminum outer shell complete with a waterproof nano coating from P2i, similar to that of the technology that we saw at CES back in January from the startup company. The phone is said to be codenamed “Catwalk,” although an official moniker for the phones is not yet known, nor are details imminent.
Apparently, the secret phone was at Mobile World Congress back in February, and only a handful of analysts were able to feast their eyes on the new toy, but solid details are yet to be revealed. There’s also the chance that they’ll release the Lumia 928 on Verizon, which we’ve been hearing about for some time now.
Today invitations have been issued to an event for the press that will reveal what Microsoft is suggesting will be “a new generation revealed” for the Xbox. This invitation notes that Don Mattrick will be present with the whole Xbox team and that a “special unveiling” will be taking place. This timeline and recent reports combined suggest this event will be the home of the official unveiling of the rumored Xbox 720.
This generation’s console will be going to battle directly with the already announced PlayStation 4 and will be bringing with it Microsoft’s next generation of gaming software. It’s highly likely that the event will contain more than just details about the console itself, bringing with it a collection of developers and game producers from top-name brands and legacy affiliates.
“On that day, we’ll share our vision for Xbox, and give you a real taste of the future. Then, 19-days later at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, we’ll continue the conversation and showcase our full lineup of blockbuster games.
We are thrilled to pull back the curtain and reveal what we’ve been working on.” – Major Nelson
This event will be happening on the 21st of May, less than a month away. This is well ahead of the gaming convention E3, this allowing game developers to ready their wares for the convention while the Microsoft-made machine has its own day in the sun.
have a peek at the brief timeline below of recent tips and suggestions from the SlashGear archive of Xbox 720 articles. As this event takes place at the real-deal Xbox campus, we can expect nothing less than a significant showing by the creators of this machine prepared for the future.
What many suspected was coming has indeed happened: Microsoft just confirmed an upcoming Xbox event on May 21st, which we expect to be focused on the company’s next-gen Xbox console (informally codenamed Durango). The company isn’t diving into specifics at this stage, but the event is taking place on its own Xbox campus and should offer a “real taste of the future,” according to Xbox Live programming director Larry Hryb. Don’t worry too much that Microsoft will completely upstage E3, which happens just a few weeks later — Hryb also promises that his firm will “continue the conversation” at the show, focusing attention on its game lineup. Players will have a chance to stream the event through both Microsoft’s services (including Xbox Live) and Spike TV, but you can be sure we’ll be on the ground to share the news first-hand.
This week the folks at LG have revealed the contents of their soon-approaching press event for New York City: the smartphone known as the LG Optimus G Pro. This device has been released internationally and will be appearing in the United States with 4G LTE capabilities and a set of specifications not unlike that of the international edition. This device will be revealed with full details at the event which will take place on the first of May in the evening at a concert event.
This concert will feature the band known as Atlas Genius. This is the latest in a line of similar events hosted by LG, Samsung, and most recently HTC. Just this past week an HTC mini-concert was held with musician Pharrell Williams in promotion of the HTC One smartphone release. Several months ago, Samsung brought the Samsung Galaxy Note II to the United States with a mini-concert put on by Kanye West.
Even Apple has joined in the fun with an appearance by the Foo Fighters at the iPhone 5 release event this past year. Now with the LG Optimus G Pro, LG will be the bringing an engagement to New York City. It’s not known at the moment if the smartphone will be available at the event for demonstrations or if the company will be revealing any release information before or after the music event.
With the release of the LG Optimus G Pro, LG will have effectively updated their large smartphone nearly-tablet-sized segment while the Verizon Intuition by LG remains out there for consumers looking for a pen-toting experience. Here with the LG Optimus G Pro, Qualcomm has also jumped onboard with the Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor, this being the same processor coming with the HTC One and the Samsung GALAXY S 4.
It’s time again to get busy with an LG event for a massive release, this time in New York City with what we must assume is the LG Optimus G Pro for the United States! As the LG Optimus G Pro has been ramping up for release in all other areas of the earth save the USA, it’s high time we got some massive smartphone action of our own – starting May 1st! Have a peek at the invite here and let’s run down the clues as they come!
What we’ve seen of the LG Optimus G Pro thus far is a release on one side of the ocean, a push on the other, and signs of a USA release in recent weeks. With the LG Optimus G Pro and the Google Nexus 4 by LG continuing to make waves on AT&T, T-Mobile, and off-contract here in the USA, the LG Optimus G Pro (and its recent FCC appearance) has us guessing we’ll be getting at least an AT&T 4G LTE iteration before summer time.
The “Share the Genius” line in the invite suggests either that the device they’re about to show will be riddled with share-friendly features or that the name, Optimus G, is ready to share the spotlight with the bigger version of greatness. The LG Optimus G Pro takes the finer points of the LG Optimus G and amplifies them – not only do you get a larger display, you get a much more powerful processor from Qualcomm and photography features that had us giving the thumbs up back at MWC 2013.
Have a peek at the timeline below of recent LG mobile tips, suggestions, and otherwise excellent hands-on experiences to see if you can piece together this puzzle for yourself. LG will one way or another need to bring some heat now that the Samsung GALAXY S 4 and the HTC One are about to hit the market – make it count!
It’s the Facebook phone… but it’s every phone. Facebook Home is here, and it wants to take control of your Android experience, a new software suite rather than a specific handset. Unveiled at Facebook HQ this morning, Home arrives on Android via the Play store from April 12 and splashes your photos and friends across the lockscreen and the homescreen. We’ve been playing with Facebook Home today on the HTC First, the first device to fit into Facebook’s Home Program; read on for our first-impressions.
Facebook describes it as designing a phone around people, not apps, and the focus is the very first places you see when you turn on your device. “The homescreen is really the soul of your phone” Mark Zuckerberg said during the presentation, and Home works as that replacement launcher, with Cover Feed to make those friends your core menu, and Chat Heads to streamline talking to them.
Loading Home is like any other Android app, though it does have one extra hook into the OS. Since it’s designed as a replacement launcher, to be used instead of the regular Android one rather than alongside it, you can choose to have it open by default whenever you hit the home button on your device. At that point, consider your phone Facebookafied.
Alternatively, you can grab the HTC First, which has Home preloaded by default. Either way, the lockscreen and homescreen are swapped for Coverfeed: full-screen, chromeless pictures pulled from your friends’ updates, with discrete icons at the bottom showing “Likes” and comments. Double-tapping the image automatically likes it. Meanwhile, pulling up the bubble near the bottom of the screen – which shows your own Facebook profile picture – gives you a choice of three options: Facebook, the app launcher, and jumping back into your last-used app.
The app launcher is basically a pared-down tray of apps, where Facebook expects you to keep your most-commonly used titles. At the top, meanwhile, there are shortcuts to add Facebook status updates or photos. A side-swipe pulls over the full app drawer from the left, from which you can drag over icons to the quick launcher tray. No widgets beyond Facebook’s own Coverfeed, however.
The other big introduction with Facebook Home is Chat Heads, a new integrated messaging system that’s designed to discretely pervade the whole device. Get a new message – whether it’s a Facebook Chat or an SMS – and a small circular bubble pops up in the upper right hand corner. You can drag it around (useful, since it’ll show up on top of any app you’re currently using it, including full-screen games) and tap it to open it, at which point a conversation view opens up floating on top of whatever you were doing.
Whether it’s a Facebook conversation or a text message one is shown by the color of the voice bubble boxes themselves, and you can have multiple conversations open at once, switching between them with the row of circles along the top. Facebook group messages are also supported, with a thumbnail of the group icons clustered in the circle. Similarly swipeable notifications include missed calls and calendar alerts.
It’s certainly slick, as long as you live your social – and, by extension, mobile – life in Facebook. The complexity of a regular phone is hidden away under full-screen images, and the familiar iconography should prove welcoming for Facebook-addicts. Those who divide their time between multiple networks – such as Google+, or Twitter – might find those edged out, however, as Facebook Home’s notifications system is designed to cater for its own alerts, not those of others.
It certainly seems to make the most sense on a device that has been designed with Home in mind, the first of which – though Samsung, Huawei and others have committed to join in – is the HTC First. The phone itself is a slim, simple slice of soft-touch plastic, fronted with a glass 4.3-inch touchscreen above three touch-sensitive buttons for back, home, and menu. It’s also worth noting that the First does indeed support displaying all Android notifications, not just Facebook ones, and will come preloaded with Instagram.
The slightly out-of-date OS is also likely to be less of a big deal: the First hides Android 4.1 Jelly Bean under Home, running on a dualcore Snapdragon 400 processor and paired with multimode 3G/4G for roaming LTE use. AT&T will have the first taste of the First, at $99.99 with a new, two-year agreement from April 12, though it’ll also be coming to the UK and Europe on EE and Orange later in the year.
Facebook’s strategy – focusing on its software for many devices, not software and hardware for just one – does make some sense. Dedicating yourself to a single device doesn’t make sense when you want to appeal to every Facebook user who has an Android phone, after all. What remains to be seen is whether even those who are totally devoted to Facebook will be willing to immerse themselves so entirely in the experience.
Zuckerberg’s stats suggest Facebook mobile use is by far the most common thing smartphone owners are doing with their handsets. We’re not quite so convinced, and while the garden isn’t entirely walled – you can obviously get to other Android apps, they’re just not placed front and center like Facebook is – we’ve seen things like HTC’s own BlinkFeed on the HTC One giving immersive Facebook updates without also ousting every other news feed, Twitter, and other notifications. Meanwhile, the Facebook Home Program seems unlikely to take off until prepaid devices arrive; $99.99 with agreement gets you a decent smartphone these days, after all, and one which isn’t dominated by a single service, however sociable that might be.
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