Developers will be getting their hands on their Google Glass Explorer Edition really soon. At the Google Ventures event today, Google stated that its going to be shipping Google Glasses to developers within the next month. It’s hoping to get the gadgets into the hands of developers before its major event of the year, Google Glass I/O, takes place. Google’s a bit off from its previous speculated ship date, but its better late than never.
According to our good friends at Android Community, Google is shipping Google Glass out to several developers who pre-ordered the gadget last year. These developers will hopefully be able to take part in the Glass Mirror API which will more than likely be released at Google I/O. Google I/O in general is speculated to mainly focus on Google Glass and getting developers excited for its release.
Also at the Google Ventures event today, Google Ventures partnered up with Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to form the “Glass Collective”. The Glass Collective is an investment syndicate that will provide the funding that will help many hopeful entrepreneurs get started with their ideas surrounding Google Glass. If you’re one of those hopeful entrepreneurs, be sure to submit your ideas to the Glass Syndicate for a chance to make your ideas become a reality.
As T-Mobile begins their push for the iPhone 5 as they finally have the device available for sale directly, they’ve created a trade-in offer where you’ll toss them your old iPhone for a deal. When you do trade in your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S (no other device will do) right up until June 16th (Father’s Day), you’ll get a $0 down deal on the iPhone 5 – plus monthly payments. This will knock out $99.99 USD from your final bill – and you’ve got the potential to knock out a whole lot more than that!
When you get an iPhone 5 from T-Mobile normally, you’ll be paying $99.99 up front and $20 per month for 24 months. That’s $480 + $99.99 = $579.99 USD. This compares to two other prices you could potentially pay for the iPhone 5, both of them available both here and in our iPhone 5 T-Mobile pricing breakdown.
1. On-contract from non-T-Mobile carriers: $199 with subsidy costs built-in to your data/voice/text plan (you can’t see it, but it’s there). 2. Off-contract straight from Apple: $649 (we’ll stick to the 16GB version since T-Mobile is advertising that model as their hero with $99.99 down and so forth) 3. T-Mobile payment plan: $579.99 ($99.99 down with $20 per month for 24 months)
According to T-Mobile you’ll get the first $99.99 knocked off of your bill, bringing you back to the payments of $20 USD per month for 24 months, this ending up at $480 USD. T-Mobile also notes that your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S might be worth more than that base $99.99 trade-in value:
“Depending on the trade-in value of their device, customers will also receive a credit of up to $120, which can be used toward monthly payments, an existing T-Mobile bill, or the purchase of accessories or another device.” – T-Mobile
We’ve reached out to T-Mobile to get clarification on what this added value might be: more than likely it’ll depend on how mint your device is and/or if you’ve got a device with more internal storage than the basic 16GB model. UPDATE: Below you’ll now find details on which device will get you the most from T-Mobile and what your minimum requirements will be as well.
Customer trades-in an iPhone 5 • $0 Down on new iPhone 5 • Monthly EIP payments are $13/mo for 24 months • –OR- Customer receives up to $164 bill credit, which can be applied toward monthly payments, a T-Mobile bill or the purchase of accessories or another device
Customer trades-in an iPhone 4S • $0 Down on new iPhone 5 • Monthly EIP payments are $15/mo for 24 months • –OR- Customer receives up to $120 bill credit, which can be applied toward monthly payments, a T-Mobile bill or the purchase of accessories or another device
Customer trades-in an iPhone 4 • $0 Down on new iPhone 5 • Monthly EIP payments are $19/mo for 24 months • –OR- Customer receives up to $24 bill credit, which can be applied toward monthly payments, a T-Mobile bill or the purchase of accessories or another device
“The used device must meet minimal criteria including being in good condition, having an intact and working display and being free of liquid damage or corrosion and also goes through security checks to ensure it is not a device that has been reported lost or stolen.” – T-Mobile Representative
NOTE: If you need convincing that the iPhone 5 is a device you need to own, have a peek at our full iPhone 5 review, now!
So is this trade-in worth it? You simply must see how much your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S is worth on the open market to decide. If you sell your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S on ebay, for instance, you might get more than $500 USD for it – but you’ll also have to make absolutely sure you know how to wipe out your device before you sell it, unlock it so the person you’re selling it to can use it, and have a basic knowledge of how to sell and ship items with ebay in the first place.
If these sorts of must-haves scare the living daylights out of you, you have three options, each of them better than the last:
1. Just keep your iPhone and buy a new iPhone 5 from T-Mobile so you’ve got 2 iPhones, the older one just as awesome as an iPod. 2. Trade your iPhone in with T-Mobile and get that new iPhone 5 – they’ll take care of the details. 3. Ask your nephew or niece how to make ebay sell your stuff – and don’t forget to give them a few bucks for the effort!
Stay tuned as we get the final details from T-Mobile on what they’ll be looking for in regards to the above-and-beyond $99.99 value of your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S. Seeya then!
Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox may sacrifice backward-compatibility for 360 games in favor of easier cross-platform development for Xbox and Windows PC games, sources claim, following Sony in jumping to AMD chips. The unofficially titled “Xbox 720” will ditch IBM Power PC processors for AMD’s x86-based chips, Bloomberg reports, bringing greater hardware parity to Xbox and PC, and allowing game developers to more easily release titles for both platforms. However, those upgrading from an existing Xbox 360 to the new console may be less impressed.
That’s because, without some clever emulation, an x86-based console would not be able to run games designed for the older, Power PC-based versions. Any catalog of existing Xbox 360 titles would not, therefore, run on the new hardware.
Microsoft could work around that limitation by cooking up an emulator that, in effect, creates a virtual Xbox 360 within which to play older titles. However, it could also choose to chase new game sales completely, or alternatively offer some sort of cloud-based game access for older titles. Previous leaks have already suggested that the new Xbox will be designed to be permanently connected to the internet.
Sony has already paved the way for a jump to AMD silicon, confirming earlier this year that the PlayStation 4 will use a custom SoC from the processor firm. That chip will pair eight 64-bit Jaguar cores with AMD Radeon graphics, among other things, while older titles – the game discs for which will be no longer compatible with the console – will be delivered from the Gaikai cloud-gaming service.
The Xbox 720 almost certainly won’t use the same SoC, but a similar arrangement of Jaguar cores is likely. AMD is particularly eager to pick up design wins from gaming heavyweights, such as Sony and Microsoft, because it offers a way out of the ever-shrinking profit margins in desktop and notebook PCs; the company’s willingness to compete on price apparently left NVIDIA out of the loop, with the chip rival saying that it was unwilling to work for the sort of budget Sony had in mind for the PS4.
For Microsoft, a common system architecture between Xbox and PC would make cross-platform gaming far more straightforward, and allow it to better leverage its footprint in both categories. For game developers, there would be less investment – in terms of both time and money – required to release titles for each platform, something Microsoft supposedly hopes will court coders back to Xbox and away from more “casual” platforms or upstarts like OUYA.
Exactly when we might see the new “Durango” Xbox is unclear at this stage. Microsoft was tipped to be readying a reveal sometime this month, but is said to have squashed that timeline in favor of an event later in Q2. That could be at E3 2013 in June, or at a standalone event on May 21, other sources claim.
Is the HTC One the best Android smartphone around, and has the wait for the AT&T LTE version been worth it? We’ve already spent more than 6,000 words on the HTC One, back in our review of the European version, but this was our chance to put the first US-specific variant to the test. To do that we took it out into the wild to put the key selling points – specifically the UltraPixel camera and the 4G speed – on trial at the New York Auto Show, among other places, as well as to see if the non-removable battery is a deal-breaker in the face of the fast-incoming Samsung Galaxy S 4. Read on to find out how the HTC One fared.
Design, Performance, and Usability
We’ve already comprehensively covered the core proposition of the HTC One in our original review. Suffice to say, the appeal of the matte-finish metal handset hasn’t waned since then. Build quality keeps it at the top of the pile of Android devices in recent memory, for a start, and having weighed the One against the Galaxy S 4 at the Samsung phone’s launch, it’s clear that HTC has the edge in design and quality. One mild concern is the tendency of the white polycarbonate inset strip running the edge of the phone to pick up color smudges when we kept it in our jeans pocket, though these usually rubbed off.
Some of the details stand out after a longer period with the phone. BoomSound has a ridiculous name, but we can’t argue with the audio performance: we’ve found ourselves showing off more video, as well as reaching for the One in preference to other devices when it comes to consuming multimedia from services like Netflix, simply because the front-facing stereo speakers are simply that good. The power from the speakers is also incredibly useful when using the One as a navigation device in the car, while the screen they flank is no slouch either, with a combination of 1080p Full HD resolution and a color balance that’s refreshingly level rather than skewed to over-saturation.
HTC One walkthrough:
Sense 5 and the BlinkFeed homescreen – which pulls together news, Facebook, Twitter, calendar, and tips from the phone – continues to draw our attention, even with the gloss of newness taken off it. With its Flipboard-style feed of headlines and images, BlinkFeed makes for a great distraction, though we can’t help but wish HTC would hurry up and add offline caching of articles, the ability to add your own RSS feeds, and Google+/Google Now integration. The latter would arguably make the biggest difference; we like the low-noise way the One slots your upcoming appointments into the first page of BlinkFeed tiles each day, and it would make a perfect fit for Google Now suggestions.
Overall, Sense 5 combined with Android 4.1 performs well, and with the exception of Photosphere we’ve not really missed anything from the very latest version of Jelly Bean. AT&T’s version of the One includes a customized browser, but despite our initial concerns, performance actually improved over the stock phone. In SunSpider, the test of JavaScript performance, the European One scored 1,118.9ms versus the 1,035.1ms of the AT&T version (in SunSpider, faster is better). Overall, we had no issues with the One’s quadcore 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 processor pulling its weight running apps, and even AT&T’s preloaded software – which includes DriveMode, Family Map, Locker, Navigator, Ready2Go, Messages, myAT&T, Smart Wi-Fi, YPmobile, and Device Help – are neatly clustered into a folder rather than scattershot across the app launcher.
It’s not all perfect, though. A lingering frustration is the black menu bar that often appears in third-party apps, where HTC has followed Android guidelines and dropped a dedicated menu key, but apps aren’t yet putting the three-dot softkey where it should be, tucked out of the way in the corner. That means you lose a stripe of your 4.7-inch screen to a single control (the functionality of which varies widely) but, more annoyingly, the on-screen keyboard shifts up to accommodate it.
That has at times played havoc with our typing, our thumbs not extending sufficiently to avoid the menu key and thus interrupting text entry. Admittedly, it’s not HTC’s fault, but it’s an ongoing annoyance that apps not adhering to the latest Android UI guidelines continue to hit the Play store.
Camera and Multimedia
HTC’s UltraPixel strategy has proved divisive, with the company chasing more light instead of more megapixels. We’ve covered how the One uses its 4-megapixels extensively in our review, but we also gave the smartphone its chance to shine out in the wild, taking it to the New York Auto Show last month.
Your average tradeshow is tough going on a camera, whether it’s a DSLR, a point-and-shoot, or on a smartphone. The lighting ranges from ridiculously bright, meaning you get masses of reflections and glare, to moodily dark, making details difficult to pick out and the threat of noise a constant. In-between, there’s all manner of colored lights that can confuse a camera’s sensor.
The NY Auto Show was no different, but the HTC One held its own for the most part. All of the photos and video from our coverage of the new Chevrolet Camaro Z28 and the Corvette Stingray was taken using the One, for example, with us also using the Zoe “highlight” feature that creates summary videos based on 3.6s snippets of video and burst-stills.
For the photos, despite the mixed lighting conditions, the quality was surprisingly high. Blur is noticeably absent, the One being able to stick to faster shutter-speeds and lower ISOs thanks to its greater appetite for light, and photos which combine well-lit areas alongside much darker ones are impressively balanced. The phone is fast, too: back-to-back shots are roughly as swift as you can repeatedly tap the on-screen button.
Video, meanwhile, looks great at 1080p Full HD resolution, with the same impressive low-light and mixed-lighting performance as for stills. However, the noisy show floor proved a challenge for the One’s stereo microphones at times, however: you can certainly make out speech compared to background noise, but it lacks the pinpoint clarity you’d get with a directional microphone or a dedicated clip-on mic.
Nonetheless, for immediacy and convenience, the One certainly held its own. At full resolution and in perfect lighting, HTC’s choice of big pixels rather than lots of them struggles somewhat, but in more everyday situations the convenience of being able to take low-light situations in your stride wins out.
The downside with the One – and, specifically, with Zoe photography, which simultaneously grabs 20 stills and 3.6s of Full HD video – remains how multimedia is managed, particularly off the phone. We’ve already highlighted how poorly that plays with auto-upload services, such as those offered by Dropbox, Google+, and Facebook, which basically fill your cloud storage with dozens of nearly-identical shots. The AT&T version is no different in that respect, and HTC desperately needs to step up and address offloading media with its HTC Sync Manager app.
While it’s at it, we wouldn’t argue with more themes and flexibility for the Zoe highlights system: the One’s automatically curated showreels, which come complete with transitions, filters, and background music. We’re still impressed by how neatly the One knits these together, but the option for longer clips (currently it’s 30 seconds only) and the ability to use your own music would make the feature considerably more useful. We’ve found people are much more willing to watch our photos and video when they’re stitched into a highlight reel, and so a greater number of presets (out of the box there are six to choose between) would make it all the more engaging.
HTC Sense, Zoe, and Highlights demo:
One advantage those looking to AT&T for their One will have is capacity. The carrier has the US exclusive on the 64GB version, other networks making do with the 32GB model, and given the amount of data Zoe photography creates, and that there’s no microSD storage option, that makes a big difference. It’s not a cheap way to boost capacity, though: AT&T is asking $199.99 for the 32GB One, or $100 more to double the memory.
Phone, LTE, and Battery
HTC’s BoomSound speaker technology means the One has no problems pushing out in-call audio, and happily performance on AT&T’s network matched up with that. We had no problems keeping a signal, even though HTC squeezes the One’s antennas into the tiny polycarbonate notches in the unibody case, and hardly a dropped call, even in areas where coverage was patchy.
We tested LTE performance in multiple locations where AT&T currently offers service, including New York City, Denver, Wichita, and San Francisco. Speeds ranged from as much as 39Mbps downloads and nearly 19Mbps uploads, location depending, though averaged out at 15.95Mbps down and 7.06Mbps up. In contrast, we saw peeks of 37Mbps down and nearly 11Mbps up on an iPhone 5 using Verizon’s LTE network.
LTE has a reputation for being power hungry, and while the One’s 2,300 mAh battery isn’t small, the fact that it can’t be removed – unlike, say, the battery in Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 – has left some wary of the quadcore smartphone. In practice, we’ve found the One has sufficient legs to last through the day, particularly if its power management systems are turned on. These put data to sleep after periods of extended inactivity, waking them only occasionally to check for new messages and other updates, as well as reducing screen brightness and enabling other frugal systems.
Over the course of a sixteen hour day, then, with a mixture of cellular and WiFi connectivity, we saw roughly 30-percent of the battery left. More patchy use of WiFi saw LTE take a greater toll, with 20-percent left after just over twelve hours. However, even when we forgot to plug the charger in overnight, the One proved frugal, only dropping a few percentage points thanks to the data throttling.
Wrap-Up
Nothing about AT&T’s version of the HTC One has changed our positive impression of the smartphone. In fact, native LTE support for the US has only improved our takeaway opinion: the One is beautifully constructed, slickly designed, fast, has thoughtful software tweaks – a few third-party app UI glitches aside – and a great, flexible camera.
The road ahead for HTC isn’t going to be an easy one. Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 is the specter on the near horizon, and for however much it may offer an evolutionary step up from its Galaxy S III predecessor, it comes with the might of the South Korean company’s prodigious marketing machine (and its equally massive budget). In contrast, the One sees HTC take a far greater risk than it has in recent years – in investment in construction, camera strategy, and software – and, for the most part, that pays off in the quality of the overall device.
The Samsung Galaxy S 4 is, if last year’s model is anything to go by, likely to be the default choice for Android buyers in 2013. However, the HTC One is arguably the more thoughtful choice. In AT&T form, it’s our favorite Android handset of the moment.
There are two HTC smartphones headed to the market in the next few weeks, the First of which is called the HTC First – fully equipped with Facebook Home for you social networking fanatics. The other is one that’s not been fully recognized is an iteration of the HTC experience with nearly the same specifications of the HTC First, this time called the HTC M4 – aka the HTC e1. The thing is, though, that the HTC e1 is already on the market in China, while the HTC M4 (code name similar to the HTC One‘s “M7″) might never reach the public.
So what’ve we got here? We’ve got a potential for three devices. The First two are confirmed, while the third might actually just be an early iteration of the second. The HTC First is the Facebook Phone which we’ve heard about this week, it’s specifications turning up to be mid-tier all the way, complete with a 5 megapixel camera on its back and a 4.3-inch display: these two specs will be important in a moment.
HTC First • 4.96 x 2.56 x 0.35 (in) (LxWxT) • 4.3 inch, HD 720p, 341 PPI • Weight: 4.37 oz • Android 4.1 Jelly Bean • Facebook Home UI • Qualcomm 8930AA, dual core 1.4 (Snapdragon 400 MSM8930) • Internal storage: 16GB, available capacity varies (this spec suggests different editions are on the way) • NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 • 5-megapixel camera on back, 1.6-megapixel camera on front, both front and back with BSI sensor • 2000 mAh battery
This device is rather similar to the HTC e1, a smartphone released in China earlier this year with HTC’s own Sense user interface. This device also has a 4.3-inch display and a 5 megapixel camera on it’s back. It looks a lot more like an HTC One X than the HTC first does, on the other hand.
HTC e1 • 5.05 x 2.63 x 0.39 (in) (LxWxT) • 4.3 inch, 480 x 800, 216.97 PPI • Weight: 4.59 oz • Android 4.1 Jelly Bean • HTC Sense 4.0 UI • Qualcomm MSM8960, dual core 1.5 (Snapdragon S4+) • Internal storage: 8GB, microSD card slot for expansion by 32GB • NFC (depending on operator), Bluetooth 4.0 • 5-megapixel camera on back with BSI, 1.6-megapixel camera on front, HTC ImageChip inside for image processing • 2100 mAh battery
So the two are different enough not to be mistaken for one another on the street with their looks, but close enough in design specification-wise to have been created to attack the same market. Of course the inclusion of Facebook Home on one and not the other makes them utterly, utterly different when it comes to who will actually pick them up. Then there’s the HTC M4, a device that’s not get gotten a final market name.
HTC M4 • 5.05 x 2.63 x 0.39 (in) (LxWxT) • 4.3 inch, HD 720p, 341 PPI • Weight: N/A • Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean • HTC Sense 5.0 UI • Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 MSM8930, dual core 1.2Ghz • Internal storage: N/A • Bluetooth 4.0 • UltraPixel camera on back with unknown megapixels, 1.6-megapixel camera on front • Battery Size N/A
Sounds like a combination of the HTC First and HTC e1, doesn’t it? If you’re thinking about picking up an HTC smartphone specifically in the next few months and for one reason or another want to avoid the HTC One, you might want to wait for this un-named HTC M4 device – especially if it works with UltraPixel technology.
Of course if you want to roll with Facebook Home, you’ll want to consider the HTC First instead. Then again, you could still simply load Facebook Home to your smartphone via the Google Play app store like everyone else and have an UltraPixel camera on your device on top of it all.
Let us know what you think, and head down to our HTC first timeline below for more information on this brand new smartphone. And don’t forget to hit up our Android Hub while you’re at it!
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.
Facebook announced and showed off its new Facebook Home start screen/home screen feature for Android devices today, and there was a lot of new stuff that the social network went over, including features like Chat Heads, Cover Feed, and of course, the new HTC First smartphone built specifically for Facebook junkies. However, here’s everything you need to know about today’s announcements.
Facebook Home is essentially a family of apps that can run on any Android device, although HTC announced the HTC First, which is a new smartphone specifically built with Facebook Home in mind. This device will become available starting April 12 for $99 after signing a new two-year contract with AT&T.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasizes that Facebook Home is built around people, not apps, which means that users can spend more time interacting with their friends and families on their smartphones, rather than take unnecessary time to switch between all the apps that you have piled onto your Android handset.
Facebook Home includes Cover Feed, which displays recent status updates from your friends, with notifications to go along with them, only this time they’re more integrated into the Android OS. The Cover Feed is the first thing you see in Facebook Home, and it’s there to make sure that you receive all of the important updates from your group of friends.
There’s also a new messaging platform in Facebook Home called Chat Heads, which allows you to easily chat with your Facebook friends without leaving the app that you’re currently in, which means that there’s no app-switching required. In Chat Heads, a small avatar icon will appear in the corner of the screen when you receive a message. From there, you can tap on it to reply to the message, and then flick it off of the screen to go back to what you were doing.
Facebook Home will be available starting on April 12, and it’ll be a free download in the Google Play store. Facebook notes that they’re not trying to “fork” Android with their new product, and are mostly trying to supplement Google’s OS. Either way, Facebook Home will work on most Android devices, and the new home screen launcher will soon work for the HTC One, One X, One X+, Samsung Galaxy S III, GALAXY S 4, and the Galaxy Note II. Plus, Facebook plans to update the launcher every month with new features and support for more devices, which is always a good thing in our book.
This week Facebook has revealed a software experience for any Android device they call “Home.” This experience is a family of apps for any Android device that’s been teased to work on not just the HTC device we’ve already been teased with, but any Android device you’ve got in your pocket right now. This system is build around people, not apps, as Zuckerberg spoke about, and is not a full re-work of Android.
With Cover Feed you’ll be seeing a selection of updates from your Friends. You’ve also got notifications as you’d have gotten before (if you’d had Facebook’s app working with notifications to Android), but here it’ll be appearing right from your Android lockscreen. This system is at it’s base a real Facebook-centric world for your Android smartphone.
With Home you’ll also have access to your normal Android apps. Your lockscreen shows you and your Facebook updates – one swipe up from your Facebook profile image and you’ve got your normal Android apps. Each of these apps load normally, using your smartphone as they normally would. One swipe back downward and you’re back to the lockscreen.
Chat Heads is a messaging system that takes on the full messaging world inside Facebook and applies the Home aesthetic. This system will be your one-stop-shop for talking to your friends on Facebook.
This is part of an ever-expanding world for Facebook on your smartphone that’ll be shown all day long here on SlashGear and through our own Android Hub – grab all the info you need there!
This week you’ll find yourself downloading a rather sizable patch from Blizzard Entertainment for Diablo III, patch 1.0.8 for multiplayer improvements galore. What you’ll be seeing is no less than 8 changes to the way you play – or will be able to play – in multiplayer. What Blizzard describes this update as coming at you as is “making two heads actually better than one!”
As it was back in Diablo II, this update should be bringing the experience you’re getting in Diablo III up to par – you’ll find yourself running wild in single-player missions (still online, of course), but with friends you’ll now have added benefits far beyond those you’ve seen before. Blizzard has made a number of changes to the game in this new patch, noting the following about the push:
“The point is that multiplayer can be lot of fun, but given the downsides it can often feel not worth the effort. By making it easier for players to find one another, improving social features, and providing direct buffs to co-op groups, we hope to change that perspective.” – Blizzard Entertainment
Matchmaking Tags
With patch 1.0.8 you’ll have the added option in “additional options” when making a new game right below your difficulty rating that allows you to “tag” the match. You’ll be able to choose “no tag” or questing, brawling (PvP), Full Act Clear, or Key Warden. This will make it so you’re rolling out with players aiming to blast forth with the same aims as you.
Multiplayer Bonuses
As you enter a multiplayer game, you’ll find that Blizzard has added a 10% more XP boost per player for a max bonus of 30% more XP in a 4-player game. According to Blizzard, this bonus will be multiplicative with MP bonuses already in place.
MP10 with XP bonus in Inferno of 510% (plus normal 100% is 610%) + 4 player game with 3 other players in-game 30% = 793% as much XP as normal
This also works with Magic Find and Gold Find, but with these you’ll be able to surpass your until-now max of 300% of both. You’ll get an additional “flat” 10% Magic and Gold find with each new player that joins the game.
Monster Health
Where before this week, each monster gained 70% extra health for each new player joining a game, you’ll now find them gaining just 50%. The difference should be just enough to allow your tiny ill-equipped buddy to join your game and not be slaughtered instantly.
Identify All
Not just for your multiplayer experiences, this one button should make the process of looking at items you’ve collected with the greatest of ease. No more click, click, click for you! This was also a Diablo II staple returning for the D3 fun.
Archon Kills
Before this week, most Wizards may have been skipping multiplayer simply because kills didn’t fuel Archon adequately – no kills, no magic! Here in 1.0.8, Archon duration is extended by assists. This means if you’ve even so much as thrown pin prick of a spell at a monster and are still around when it dies, your Archon duration will be extended.
Combat Alerts
Picking up on the trends seen in real-deal multiplayer games every day, Blizzard has decided to automatically alert all players in games when a player deals or takes damage from an Elite pack or Treasure Goblin for the first time. A new “combat” icon will appear on your mini-map, and combat icon will appear above your banner in town, too! Bad luck for those of you hoping to sneak into multiplayer games and fight by yourself!
Players Near You
You’ll be given the same alerts (basically the same, anyway) as StarCraft II users get now when you’ve got players logged into Diablo III in your own local network. If you’re playing at your College or hit up local internet hotspots where gaming is a norm, connections can be made real swift! Of course if you hate meeting people and want to play with users across the universe, you can still do so without a problem.
Private Chat
With patch 1.0.8 you’ll be able to start your own private conversation – up to 99 players can join if you invite them. This is essentially the same thing you did in Diablo II when you created a room to have a chat in about what items you wanted to trade, or re-grouped after a fabulous battle. Chats ho!
Wrap-up
This update will be pushed to you automatically starting this week – if you don’t see the update, you’ll likely see it in the next week or two. Those of you wishing to get in on the patch right this minute can head over to the Diablo III Public Test Realm FAQ and see how you can participate. Make with the clicks!
The Star Wars video game company LucasArts has been closed down and is in the process of being broken apart by Disney. As Disney owns LucasFilm and the rights to all media therein, the video game subsidiary LucasArts is (or was) part of what they purchased. With this breakup of the company, Disney will be moving from an internal development model (with LucasArts) to a licensing model, this allowing companies from across the market their chance at developing video games in the Star Wars universe.
LucasArts created a collection of games over the past couple of decades including such mega-hits as X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and Dark Forces and some relatively lesser-known titles that will effectively fizzle. According to a statement provided by Game Informer, layoffs are imminent, if not already in-effect.
“After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.” – Disney
Reports today suggest that every single one of LucasArts remaining 150 employees have been laid off this month. This is the last wave, it would seem, of a series of layoffs that span back several years. According to Ars Technica, LucasArts employees numbered closer to 500 back in the mid-2000s. This also isn’t the beginning of LucasFilm’s LucasArts licensing out the rights to games without in-house development.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic – Bioware • Star Wars: Battlefront – Pandemic • Lego Star Wars – Travellers Tales
Though it’s always difficult to report news of layoffs in any of the industries we report on, this information can be seen as a positive force for those interested in the further adventures of the characters inside the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and several other LucasArts title universe. Though we’ve not heard specifically about anything beyond Star Wars titles at the moment, we’re certainly all for developers from all over the wide world of gaming taking their crack at A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away!
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