Hasta La Gadget!

HTC CEO Peter Chou has promised to step down if the HTC One is not a sales success, insiders claim, a dangerous commitment given reports that component shortages have scuppered the original launch plans. Chou put his neck on the line in a meeting with senior HTC executives late last year, sources close to the situation told the WSJ, only to find that HTC had been downgraded as a customer among suppliers and would struggle to secure enough casings, camera components, and other parts for the new flagship.

That’s the word from an unnamed HTC executive speaking to the newspaper, blaming the company’s fluctuating demands for phone parts in previous years for leaving the supply chain wary. “The company has a problem managing its component suppliers as it has changed its order forecasts drastically and frequently following last year’s unexpected slump in shipments” the exec explained.

“HTC has had difficulty in securing adequate camera components as it is no longer a tier-one customer” they concluded. The issue around the One’s camera is somewhat ironic, given the UltraPixel technology – which includes a custom-manufactured 4-megapixel sensor built to HTC’s specifications especially for the phone – is part of HTC’s key marketing message.

The company had originally intended to have the One on store shelves by mid-March, but was forced to rethink plans shortly before the intended launch date. Third-party retailers and carriers began complaining that the arrival of their expected stock had been pushed back to the end of March.

Meanwhile, HTC remains upbeat about its ability to get the One out almost on time, albeit perhaps not initially in huge numbers. “We…are working tirelessly with all of our channel partners to ensure that we can fulfill as many orders as possible” CMO Benjamin Ho said in a statement. “We will start fulfilling pre-orders by the end of March in certain markets and will roll out to more markets as we approach April.”

Chou isn’t the only person at HTC finding the company’s struggles are affecting their employment. The company supposedly froze year-end bonuses in 2012, leaving some to speculate that the money was instead being earmarked for a push in marketing around the One this year.

HTC supplier status downgrade rumored as CEO bets job on One success is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Another day, another leak from Google. As The Next Web reports, a note-collecting service called Keep was accessible on Google Drive for a short period of time last night — and if your short-term memory is a bit cloudy, Drive itself got leaked in a similarly bizarre fashion before getting official last year. 1E100 had initially found source code, images and various links that seemed to point to Keep, which apparently went live soon after. Interestingly, while all of the links point to error pages, one redirects to a specific, unresolveable app url on Google Play. Android Police was able to snag some screenshots of the web app in action — albeit disconnected from Drive at the time — noting that it’s reminiscent of Mountain View’s late Notebook service that was killed in ’09. Whether the likes of Evernote will have to worry remains to be seen, but the added functionality to Drive will certainly be appreciated — now, how about letting us get at that Now app for iOS?

Filed under: Software, Google

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Via: Android Police, The Next Web, Google System

Source: IE100 (Google+)

Signs that Google is looking to take on Evernote and other digital notebook services have been spotted, with Google Keep briefly spotted in the wild before the plug was swiftly pulled. The service, which was temporarily available at http://drive.google.com/keep/ on Sunday, an apparently unintended preview spotted by Android Police, seemingly picks off where Google Notebook left off, with support for notes, to-do lists, photo clipping, and more.

Google Notebook was axed several years back, however, in one of the company’s regular culls. The company shifted all existing notes saved using the service – which made clipping web content for later review more straightforward – into Google Docs.

According to the early preview, Keep will have both web and mobile views for browsing and searching through notes, and creating new notes and lists. There’ll also apparently be an Android app, of which there’s no mention in the Google Play store at time of writing.

Still, we hope there’s more work to be done before Keep is considered fully ready for primetime, as right now the service is pretty bare-bones. There’s basic color-coding of notes and lists, and support for archiving and search, but Google’s offering pales in comparison to what more established services like Evernote and Microsoft’s OneNote deliver.

That may be offset by Google’s ubiquity, of course. Just as the search giant is pushing Google+ membership with every new Gmail account set up, it could well do the same for Google Keep, as well as bake it into the Chrome browser and Chrome OS devices as a way to store webpages and other content for offline reading.

[via TechCrunch]

Google Keep prematurely previewed: Look out, Evernote is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The folks over at Android Police did some sleuthing and discovered some surprising tidbits within a Javascript file on Google Play’s website. According to information found within the file, Google is prepping a new feature called “Google Play News,” with various sentences scattered within it indicating that it will offer newspapers in the same way Play already offers magazines and other content.

What kind of information is in the Javascript? Says Android Police, they dug out these phrase: “To read Google Play News, you must have a supported Android phone or tablet.” “Please sign in to get this News edition.” “Please sign in to purchase this News Issue.” “Please sign in to purchase this News Edition Subscription.” “Subscribing you to this news edition…” “You have subscribed to this news edition. It is now available on your device.”

As you can see, there is mention of both subscriptions and issues, indicating that users will be able to either subscribe to a specific newspaper, or to purchase individual issues of one or more papers. There is also a reference to news “Editions,” which are yet unspecified, so we’ll have to wait and see what they mean by that.

Another interesting tidbit was found in a CSS file, which shows that the color yellow will be assigned to the not-yet-available news section in the same way the music, movies, magazines, and such all have their own color assignments. This seems to further confirm the information found in the Javascript file. Aside from this, Google is redirecting to its Magazine pages for news links, and is using Magazine images as placeholders.

[via Android Police]

Javascript file hints at possible Google Play News feature is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung’s been laying on the marketing glitz for the upcoming Galaxy S IV ahead of its Samsung Unpacked 2013 event later today, perhaps because there’ll be few surprises at the actual show thanks to all the breaches. A pair of videos from serial leaker IT168 have just been outed allegedly showing two new TouchWiz features from the upcoming handset: SmartPause and floating touch. The latter will display larger image thumbnails or an info box for contacts when you hover your finger over either, while SmartPause stops video from playing when you look away from it — an eye-detection feature that had been rumored previously but never spotted in action. Naturally, this may not be the final hardware they’re playing with, but you can judge for yourself after the break — just turn down your speakers first, as the videos are a tad noisy.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: IT168 (YouTube) (1), (2)