Jan 08
The folks at IK Multimedia have created a new accessory for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that brings motion control to iOS. While you’re not going to just be … Continue reading
Jan 08
Today T-Mobile isn’t crashing any parties
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Jan 08
Verizon To Launch New Nokia ‘Icon’ Handset In Move That Could Boost Windows Phone’s US Market Share
Posted in: Today's Chili
According to Verizon, a new Nokia phone is set to land in the United States. Dubbed the “Icon,” the Lumia handset sports a 5-inch screen, a 20-megapixel camera, a quad-core processor, and a 2420 mAh battery.
The device looks, as The Verge’s Tom Warren correctly points out, like a smaller version of the Lumia 1520, a phone already in the market. The Icon name appears to be final. As WPCentral uncovered here at CES, cases labeled for the Icon can already be found.
Windows Phone has seen strong success in the past year selling lower-priced handsets. But the platform, what you could call the combination of Microsoft software and Nokia hardware, has struggled to find market share in the United States and the upper-tiers of the maker globally. The Icon, provided that it is well-priced, could help ameliorate that stress point.
Pricing isn’t clear for now. The Verizon website has the phone pegged at $777 both off, and on contract. So we’ll have to wait for official figures. Tip: It won’t cost $777 with a new two-year contract.
The upper end of Windows Phone hardware is now quite diverse, with the Lumias 925, 928, 1020, 1320, 1520, and Icon each battling for share of a still-small pie. But, more and better hardware has never been a recipe for unit volume decline, so perhaps the muddle can be excused.
Current market news has been positive for Microsoft, but not groundbreaking. The company recently indicated that it saw “record sales of Windows Phone this holiday worldwide, nearly doubling phone sales during Christmas.” But as Microsoft will admit, doubling from a small baseline is only so strong an achievement.
For now, another Windows Phone looks set to land. If it can turn heads in the United States is a fair question. The comments are yours.
Top Image Credit: Flickr
Jan 08
A lot of apps, services, and sites make it easy for people to share their thoughts, experiences, and stories with their networks and with the world.
Realized something that changed your life for the better? Blog about it. Heard about a great deal at a local restaurant? Post an update on Facebook to let your friends know. Got the bag that you’ve wanted for the longest time? Post on Instagram and show the world your awesome stuff.
But if you want to keep track of your days and want to keep it a bit more private, then you can check out Bokeh. It’s a mobile blogging app that was created by Michael Zhang, who’s the founder of PetaPixel.
Bokeh is different from typical blogging services because, as Zhang explains, it’s “designed to be more for remembering than broadcasting.” I suppose you can think of it as a digital diary of sorts.
Users can choose to protect their blogs with a password or make them available to the world. It’s essentially targeted for on-the-go bloggers so you can post updates and record special events quickly and easily, and it features a clean and easy-to-use interface.
Bokeh can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store for free. An Android version is also in the works.
[via Laughing Squid]
Jan 08
If you’re looking to change carrier across your family, it might be worth holding off until after T-Mobile’s big CES presentation—because a leaked ad suggests that it’ll pay for you to move away from its rivals.
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Jan 07
The FLIR ONE iPhone case significantly ups the imaging powers of your iPhone 5 or 5s, making it into a thermal imaging camera that lets you see heat signatures from either live people and animals from up to 100 meters away, or from environmental sources including heating ducts, wall gaps and more.
Most of FLIR’s products to date are aimed at hunters and professionals, but this iPhone case brings an affordable smartphone-based thermal camera to the masses for the first time, the company told me at CES. The FLIR is $350, which might seem steep for a case with a built-in camera, but it’s actually around $750 cheaper than their least expensive standalone model currently available, and it provides an easy-to-use interface that anyone could quickly learn.
The app for the FLIR ONE offers numerous modes that interpret thermal data differently, with some showing many degrees of temperature, and others more clearly showing more or less binary differences between extreme heat, average temperature and extreme cold. Amazingly, it also picks up residual heat, like that left by a foot on a carpet for quite a while after a person was there.
At first, I was a little skeptical about the potential use cases for a thermal iPhone case for the average consumer, but the company’s representative at CES explained that you could use it for something as simple as figuring out whether your dog is climbing up onto your bed when you leave or not. It could also be used for home security, detecting thermal leaks in your house, or finding water leaks in pipes behind the walls.
Of course, it can still be used for industrial and commercial applications, too, including contracting, home inspection and building maintenance. Users can snap photos of infrared images for their phone’s library, and share pictures from within the app. There’s also a plan for an SDK later in 2014, to let others build apps for the case.
The case also has a battery within that powers the camera itself for up to four hours of continuous use, which can also provide up to 50 percent more power for your iPhone, too, if used as a backup battery. The company says it’ll ship this spring, but pre-orders are open now. Thermal imaging might not be on the top of every smartphone user’s wishlist, but it could end up appealing to more people than you might suspect.
Jan 07
For those obsessed with capturing their entire experience from the top of their head, there’s nothing quite like a 360-degree camera. Today at CES 2014 we’re having a peek at … Continue reading
Jan 07
Cyanogen Partners With Ex-Oppo VP’s Startup, OnePlus, For Custom CyanogenMod Phones
Posted in: Today's Chili
Cyanogen Inc., the makers of an alternative Android ROM that last year raised $30 million (in two chunks) in VC funding, from Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, to try to turn what has generally been a geek project into something with more mainstream appeal, has named an official hardware partner for its endeavour.
Fittingly enough, this partner, OnePlus, is itself a startup — albeit, one founded by a person with experience of putting CyanogenMod on phones. Namely, former Oppo VP Pete Lau, who had been involved in bringing CyanogenMod to Chinese OEM Oppo’s N1 smartphone.
Lau has clearly decided to take that experience and apply it wholesale, in a new setting — where the effort isn’t an adjunct to business-as-usual Android handsets.
In a blog post announcing the news, OnePlus said: “The CyanogenMod team will work in tandem with us to combine the best hardware with the best software. They are developing a custom version of CyanogenMod with special features and tweaks.”
The first fruit of the partnership is going to be called the rather tongue-twisting OnePlus One. There’s precious little detail at this point about how the phone is going to differ from the N1 running CyanogenMod — not to mention stand out from the more-vanilla-Android crowd. But it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a mid-range device, with a pledge of “the latest and highest spec hardware” for the OnePlus One.
Other descriptors used are “fast, clean and beautiful”, which is all terribly non-specific so it’s a case of wait and see what the partnership delivers. The biggest trick the pair will have to pull off is making CyanogenMod attractive to a more mainstream user than has generally been the case thus far.
The OnePlus One is due to debut in the first half of this year, with a limited launch in “selected markets” initially, but with the aim of broadening availability down the line.
H/t to @whatthebit
[Image by Johan Larsson via Flickr]
Jan 07
The Z1S is a brand new Sony Xperia smartphone the company unveiled at CES 2014. It has the same 5-inch screen as the Z1, but it’s fatter and heavier because of its 3,000 mAh extended battery.
All of which is fine, but the only real test that matters is how the water resistant phone deals with submersion. So for our hands on, we set up an informal TechCrunch CES 2014 Gadget Lab with a very scientific salad, and some research water.
Jan 06
It’s time to get up close and personal with the full collection of HTC One devices – and not just the different sizes. Here we’ve gotten the opportunity at CES … Continue reading
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