Hasta La Gadget!

Nokia’s big surprise for Tuesday has apparently been revealed early, with the Nokia Lumia 925 being supposedly pictured in advance of its official unveil. The new Windows Phone, which Nokia teased over the weekend, has been pictured courtesy of arch-insider Evleaks, though technical details are still scant.

Nokia’s teaser video yesterday – which debuted during a UK TV commercial – showed the back of the smartphone, complete with the tagline “More than your eyes can see.” That led to expectations that it would bear a large-resolution sensor, the camera itself protruding slightly from the back-panel of the phone.

Nokia new Lumia teaser:

This new image, however, shows the other side of the smartphone. It’s a more sober device than previous Lumia, more akin in color scheme to the Lumia 928 unveiled for Verizon’s network last Friday, than the bright hues of more widespread models like the Lumia 920.

According to previous rumors, the Lumia 925 will have a metal body rather than polycarbonate plastic, though it’s hard to tell whether that’s the case from this leaked shot. It certainly looks to be thinner than the Lumia 920, which was criticized by many for its chunky casing that accommodated the optical image stabilization system to go with the 8.7-megapixel camera.

Exactly how many megapixels the Lumia 925 will offer is unclear. Some have speculated that the phone is the device so-far known by the codename “EOS“, and expected to have an 808 PureView-like huge megapixel sensor. Other rumors have indicated the 925 is more likely to be the “Catwalk“, which is tipped to have a more mainstream camera but a slender, higher-quality body.

We’ll know more tomorrow, when Nokia takes the stage in London, UK, and reveals all. SlashGear will be there to bring back all the details.

Nokia Lumia 925 leaks a day early is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Details of Google Play Games, the Android alternative to Apple’s Game Center, have leaked, with suggestions that the cloud-syncing, leaderboard-scoring, and multiplayer-matchmaking system will debut officially at Google I/O this coming week. Evidence of the refreshed gaming component was unearthed from a prerelease version (v3.1.36) of the Google Play Services APK, with Android Police sifting through the shared files to discover a new “Play Games” feature intended for managing gaming on the Android platform.

The Play Services system is the underlying Android component which all games will be able to tap into, allowing them to share a single notifications path, multiplayer gamer matching, leaderboards and achievements records, and more. Unsurprisingly, the multiplayer duties are shared with Google+, with the social network’s circles used to manage who can invite you to play a game, whose achievements you see, and who your own achievements are shared with.

Meanwhile, there’s also synchronized saved games, meaning if you have a favorite you play on both your Android phone and tablet, you should be able to pick up where you left off on either. Similarly, there are various achievements and leaderboards, with a number of icons to flag top scores and the ability to sort by recent play, by your own position in the charts, and more. All can be pushed over to Google+ to publicize your success.

Currently, the new service isn’t fully functional, leading to suggestions that there could be another, potentially user-facing app which works in conjunction with the background system. That would presumably be the equivalent of iOS’ Game Center app, with its hub of scores and various lobbies for handling multiplayer and gamer-matching based on skill level.

The Android gaming ecosystem has expanded considerably in the past year. Last May, Google was tipped to be working on a Game Center alternative, while even earlier the Google+ team was confirmed to be collaborating with developers on social games for the Facebook competitor.

Several Kickstarter projects have sought to reboot classic titles for Android and other mobile platforms, most recently seeing 90s favorite Carmageddon relaunch after having raised more than $600,000 on the crowdfunding site. Meanwhile, dedicated Android-based gaming hardware has also grown in popularity: OUYA was another Kickstarter success, for instance, while this past week BlueStacks revealed GamePop, a compact games console that borrows the Netflix-style subscription model for title access.

Both OUYA and GamePop have been forced to create their own gaming system on top of Android, to some extent, but with the new Play Games structure, Google could considerably streamline that process for other hardware developers. The system has potential beyond just Android phones and tablets, too; Google TV boxes could instantly become Xbox and PlayStation rivals, with support for second-screen play turning mobile devices into controllers and private status monitors. A hook into Chrome, meanwhile, could bring the system to the desktop and to Chromebooks.

That would leave plenty of room for innovation in pricing. Google could follow BlueStacks’ example with an all-you-can eat gaming subscription, perhaps, with a set monthly fee promising access to hundreds of premium titles across as many devices as are registered to the same account.

We’ll undoubtedly hear more about Google Play Games at I/O this coming week; SlashGear will be there to bring back all the news as it happens.

Google Play Games revealed: Android gaming gets serious is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Yesterday NASA reported that an ammonia leak had been discovered on the ISS. Astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy are embarking on an emergency spacewalk to fix the problem. NASA TV is broadcasting the walk live, and you can follow along on the somewhat safer journey past the break.

Update (3:54PM ET): Nasa has reported within the last or so that the faulty pump has been successfully replaced. The entire spacewalk took about six and half hours to complete, according to NASA’s Twitter.

Filed under: Science

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Source: Space.com, NASA (Twitter)

Google has scrapped plans to launch a physical Google Wallet credit card at Google IO next week, it’s reported, focusing instead on the digital wallet and NFC functionality baked into Android smartphones. The company had intended to reveal the credit card – which was to be black with a rainbow “W”, so AllThingsD reports – at its annual developer event, but wonky run-throughs and concerns from management that the scheme was insufficiently futuristic saw it knocked from the schedule.

In fact, Google CEO Larry Page is said to be responsible for killing off the card plans, something he’s believed to have been skeptical about for some time. Page “felt it did not press forward innovation as payments startups like Square have done” AllThingsD’s sources claim.

The demise of the Google Wallet credit card hasn’t just shaken up Google IO next week, but staffing within the company. Head of Google Wallet Osama Bedier was confirmed to have left the company yesterday, “pushed out” it’s said in favor of shifting the division into the ads and commerce team. Sridhar Ramaswarmy is now directly in charge of Wallet.

Although the physical card won’t see the light of day, for a while if ever, that’s not to say Google Wallet is going anywhere. The system will be updated with new rewards, offers, and loyalty points, it’s said, with more merchants coming on-board to accept the NFC payments. What won’t be happening any time soon is integration with Google Now, though, with the teams described as “siloed” in a way which has prevented data sharing.

Google had supposedly gone so far as to bake physical card support into the new Google Wallet app, and prototypes of the cards had already been produced. As per a usual card, they included a magnetic stripe and raised numbers; despite suggestions that Google would launch its own bank, the actual project was to partner with existing banks, and source behavioral data around shopping patterns through third-parties, rather than directly from Visa and MasterCard.

Google Wallet physical card plans reportedly axed last-minute by CEO Page is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft is in the process of developing a set-top box, according to sources who spoke with The Wall Street Journal. The device is said to be “simple” and made to stream video and similar other functions, perhaps similar to the Roku set-top box. While there are said to be prototypes already in creation, there’s no info on whether the set-top box will ever hit shelves.

The set-top box is said to have been designed several times by now, and the latest ones that made it into prototype mode reportedly have support for Kinect, enabling voice and motion control of the system. The device would, in addition, work in conjunction with Microsoft’s other devices and offerings, such as the Xbox and mobile Windows devices.

The sources went on to say that work is being done on the development side to make it simple for developers to create content for the device, including having instructed its development teams to create programs with Microsoft-created coding standards. The goal, says the sources, is for developers to have a simple way to write software for use across the company’s many devices.

Such a rumor comes at a time when Microsoft is readying the launch of the next-generation Xbox, the same thing Sony is doing, with the PlayStation 4 slated to go on sale in time for the holidays. As we’ve previously noted, however, the consoles present a bit of uncertainty, with some feeling that they might not live up to expectations. Microsoft declined commenting on the rumor.

[via Wall Street Journal]

Microsoft reportedly developing set-top box is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.