Hasta La Gadget!

Another week, another Lumia. This latest grenade thrown by Nokia in its continued assault on the smartphone market is the Lumia 625. Following up on its previous high-end devices — the good-looking one, the one with the fancy camera — the 625 is a soldier of lower rank. There’s already an army of budget Windows Phones that fill various niches, so what’s the deal? Well, despite the number on its dog tag, the 625 is far from a Lumia 620 variant: it’s a completely different phone. For starters, it sports the biggest screen of any Lumia to date (for now, anyway). Actually, make that any Nokia phone ever made. But the real reason it exists has nothing to do with the display size; it’s all about the 4G radio hiding away inside. Does LTE, plus a big screen and eyebrow-raising price tag, make it worth your while, though?%Gallery-slideshow79311%

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft, Nokia

Comments

There have been a number of component leaks all claiming to show off Apple’s new iPad recently. But now, prolific Apple leaker Sonny Dickson has put together components to give us the best idea so far of what the next-gen iPads might look like.

Read more…

Xbox Music is going free over the web today, and its long-awaited iOS and Android versions are also set to launch at some point today. The move puts Xbox Music and Microsoft on a new course, positioning the service to rival major streaming music providers like Spotify and Rdio. “The Spotify model is the most disruptive thing that’s happened in the music industry in the last five years,” Xbox Music GM Jerry Johnson told Engadget in an interview this week.

With the move to free streaming on the web — something that’s been available to Windows 8 users for some time now — Johnson and Microsoft are hoping to get in on that disruption. The first six months of streaming are entirely free, and becomes more limited after that. Like Spotify, Johnson reasons that users will be drawn in for free on the web and upgrade to the Xbox Music Pass ($10/month or $100/year). Also like Spotify, the mobile apps are essentially useless without a paid subscription. It’s unclear if streaming will be free for the Xbox One version that launches this November, though we’d bet that the first 30 days are free (like with the Xbox 360 iteration). There are some new images of what it’ll look like on Xbox One in the gallery below — it’s essentially a shinier version of the one you’re used to on your current Xbox 360.

Sadly, the iOS and Android apps don’t launch with the ability to save and play tracks offline; offline playback functionality is coming “in the coming months,” we’re told. Oh, and when Windows 8.1 launches in October, the Web Playlist tool (which creates playlists based on whatever website you’re viewing) will arrive alongside the OS update for Windows 8 users. We’d leave you with a link to Tears for Fears’ timely song, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” but Xbox Music doesn’t allow users to link out. Instead, there’s a YouTube embed below. Dance with us like it’s 1985!%Gallery-slideshow83433%

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Microsoft

Comments

Source: Xbox Music (iTunes), Xbox Music (Google Play)

Instagram revealed its user base for the first time back in January, and after topping 100 million users February 26th a blog post today says its community has grown to “more than 150 million people capturing and sharing moments every month”. That means it’s added 50 million users in the last six months, growth that’s survived and thrived through the company’s acquisition by Facebook, ToS outrage and the introduction of video. There’s value in that many eyeballs however, and COO Emily White tells the Wall Street Journal it will begin selling ads in the next year — time to find out if it can balance popularity and profitability.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Mobile, Facebook

Comments

Source: Instagram (Tumblr)

While it seems pretty certain that the next iPhone will come with a fingerprint scanner, what it will look like remains an open question. A "silver ring" around the home button (see below) is the prevailing theory; our friend Martin Hajek has taken a closer look at what that might mean in practice.

Read more…