Nokia teases new Lumia PureView phone ahead of Tuesday reveal

Nokia has teased its next camera-centric Lumia, running a promo campaign on UK television this weekend for the new Windows Phone 8 handset it is expected to officially unveil on Tuesday, May 14. The commercial, which focused on the dual-LED flash of the new smartphone, as well as what looks to be its slightly protruding lens, gives away little in the way of technical detail, but did drop the hint that it would be “more than your eyes can see,” leading to speculation it will be the device so-far known as ”EOS“.

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The obvious interpretation of the tagline is a super-high-resolution sensor, something previously rumored for the EOS and to which Nokia itself is no stranger. Chatter of the EOS picked up at the top end of the year, described as offering “proper PureView” in a similar manner to the well-esteemed but niche 808 PureView. However, there’s also talk of a separate device, the Nokia Catwalk, which is also believed to have a large-megapixel-count sensor (though smaller than EOS) and a metal body.

Although recent Lumia handsets, such as the 920, have borne the PureView brand, Nokia has yet to repeat its complex pixel-clustering approach to high-resolution photography on the 808. That phone used a whopping 41-megapixel sensor, though defaulted to roughly 5-megapixel stills: the camera combined data from multiple adjacent pixels to iron out any glitches or mistakes, or alternatively could provide lossless-quality digital zooming.

As a system, the original PureView technology worked – you can see quite how well in our review of the Nokia 808 PureView – but the oversized sensor had unavoidable consequences on the heft of the handset. The larger-than-normal build, along with the fact that the roughly five year development time meant it was still running Symbian, rather than Windows Phone, meant it never amounted to much more than a curio in Nokia’s line-up.

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Assuming the EOS – or whatever Lumia name the phone is officially dubbed – can avoid that bulk issue, it could well succeed where the 808 struggled, however. According to the rumor-mill, it will use a specially-waterproofed, aluminum casing courtesy of nano-coating experts P2i, though it’s impossible to tell from the commercial whether the handset is metal or metal-effect plastic.

Nokia is no stranger to teaser-campaigns, with the company having spent much of the last seven days flirting around the new Lumia 928. That handset, headed to Verizon in a few days time, was originally expected to make its official debut alongside the “EOS” on Tuesday, but Nokia pulled the trigger on the announcement on Friday last week.

SlashGear will be with Nokia this coming Tuesday to bring back all the details of the new Lumia.

SOURCE: TechCrunch; Pocket-lint


Nokia teases new Lumia PureView phone ahead of Tuesday reveal is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google Play Games revealed: Android gaming gets serious

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.

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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.

leaderboardMeanwhile, 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.

Sharp reportedly laying off 5,000 employees, focusing more on smartphone displays and bigger, better TVs for US market

Sharp reportedly firing 5,000 employees, narrowing focus on smartphone displays

Sharp finally had something positive to report a couple of months ago when it received a much-need cash injection from Samsung, but today’s news isn’t so rosy. According to The Asahi Shimbun, Sharp will reveal a three-year management plan next Tuesday that’ll see 5,000 workers losing their jobs as part of the company’s efforts to claw its way back into the black. Many of those who are expected to be axed are said to be employed outside of Japan, but the number of empty desks at Sharp’s head office in Osaka is also set to increase — half of the workforce there will be sent on their way, including half of the company’s directors. Allegedly, Sharp will also begin producing more 4K sets and 70-inch or over HDTVs for the US market, and also shift its broader focus towards making more “small-sized panels for smartphones and other devices.” Who exactly are these displays being made for, we wonder?

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Via: TechEye

Source: Asahi Shimbun

Google Babel to rebrand as Google Hangouts, could launch at Google I/O

We’ve heard rumblings of Google‘s new unified chat service in the past, called Babel, but it seems the company is expected to announce the new service at Google I/O next week. However, before they do that, it’s been reported that Babel is being rebranded as Google Hangouts, and will merge with the company’s current Google+ Hangouts video chat feature.

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TechRadar reports that their sources at Google have confirmed that the company is ditching the Babel moniker and will be going with “Hangouts” for its official launch. New screenshots also suggest that the new chat service has been rebranded as Hangouts, showing menu items that say “Sign out of Hangouts” and “add people to this hangout.”

This means that not only will Google+ Hangouts receive the new name that it pretty much already has, Google Talk will also be operating under the Hangouts name as well. Since this is an effort from Google to unify all of its chat services, it should definitely clear up any confusion between Google’s various chat services (like the confusing difference between Gmail Chat and Google Talk, which are essentially the same but operate under different names).

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We started to hear babblings about a possible unified chat service from Google last month, when initial screenshots were also leaked by TechRadar. The images showed what the chat interface looks like, as well as some of the emoticons that would be available. However, the photos were taken at close range, so we aren’t able to get a good look at the big picture (pun intended).

As for how the new unified chat service will be implemented into Google’s various web services, that’s still up in the air, and we should take these rumors with a grain of salt anyway, but it’s possible that Google will simply incorporate Hangouts in all of their services with an icon that shows up in the bottom-right corner or something. We could also see a Hangouts mobile app from Google as well, which would get rid of the need for the Google Talk app. We’ll be at Google I/O 2013 next week, and we’ll keep our eyes and ears open for any discussions on a new chat service.

[Source: TechRadar]


Google Babel to rebrand as Google Hangouts, could launch at Google I/O is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google Wallet physical card plans reportedly axed last-minute by CEO Page

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.

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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.

Facebook and Waze: blending your worlds together one data point at a time

Word has it Facebook is looking to acquire crowdsource navigation app Waze for a hefty $1 billion. Such a move would provide the social network with an array of location-based data far more substantial than any it has had thus far, adding the information on top of what it already knows about consumers’ likes, check-ins, and social circles. There’s been a lot of talk about what Waze could do for Facebook, but the end result of that is more personal: what a Waze acquisition could mean for mobile users. Location data presents the ability to uniquely blend our real-world and digital worlds, mixing them together in such a way that one is always fueling the other.

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Imagine for a second that you’re out shopping, perhaps for a major holiday or to facilitate the demise of your latest paycheck. Perhaps, in this scenario, you’ve a tech item or two in mind, a camera maybe, and so you spend the day driving from one electronics store to the next in a spree of window shopping.

If you’re like a lot of Facebook users, you’ll probably pull out your smartphone at least a couple times to check up on the digital half of your social world. Imagine, in this scenario, that you notice something interesting – the sponsored ads are specific to your gadget-hunting activities of the day. They’re pointing you to nearby electronics stores and deals for items you might find at them.

Such could become the reality for many mobile users if Facebook acquires Waze.

Ads are only a small part of the larger picture, however, with the access to such data presenting opportunities for improved local searches, something Facebook has been working towards for a while now. Likewise, data from your Facebook could be used to provide recommendations when using the navigational elements, such as notifications of nearby deals around lunch time for restaurants you’ve liked on the social network.

As analyst Michael Boland told AdWeek: “It fits the paradigm of the real-time status, which is the lifeblood of the News Feed. [With a Waze acquisition], you add an additional dimension to not just what you’re doing or thinking but where you are and where you’re going.”

So the question is, then: is this good or bad? The answer to that will largely depend on who you’re talking to, and many will have an initial knee-jerk reaction that is negative to the idea of Facebook knowing even more than it already knows about you. When looked at in the grander scheme of our increasingly digital lives, however, it has some nice possibilities.

These are services many of us already use, albeit independent of each other. By merging them together, our habits, locations, friends, likes and more all become centralized in a single location, with the data working among a variety of services to tailor our digital lives as closely as possible to our real-world lives. Searches become more precise. Ads become eerily relevant. The information we need starts appearing just when we need it, a la Google Now.

Rather than having information thrown at us by advertisers who hope something will stick, the information will be more of the curated sort: carefully sorted and tailored and presented at the times we’re most likely to want it, helping us save money when we’re ready to spend it, find places when we’re ready to shop – all of it based on our own likes, preferences, habits, schedules, and routes.

Knowing that, perhaps the real question is: what happens when our physical and digital worlds become part of each other? Only time will tell, but the prospect is exciting.


Facebook and Waze: blending your worlds together one data point at a time is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft reportedly developing set-top box

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.

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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.

ASUS Transformer tablet teased for Computex 2013

ASUS posted up a video on YouTube that gives us a tease at what to expect from the company at Computex 2013 this year. The video mostly highlights what the company is all about, and they show off some of their products in the video as well, with a few interesting glances at mysterious products that we haven’t seen before.

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Based on how many times they use the word “transform” in the video, we can only assume that ASUS will unveil a new Transformer tablet at Computex coming up next month, and based on the teaser video, it looks to be a smaller form factor tablet of sorts with a stylus that comes with it — tucked in on the bottom-right corner as the screenshot above suggests. It could be one of the 7-inch tablets running Windows 8 that has been recently rumored.

According to the video description, ASUS says that they will be announcing new products “that reimagine the way you interact with desktop PCs, notebooks, smartphones, tablets and more.” We’re not sure if ASUS would announce a product for everyone of these categories, but it’s possible that we’ll see new devices that blend some of these form factors together.

ASUS will be holding a press conference on June 3 for Computex 2013, where the company will officially unveil what they’ve been working on, and based on their cute little countdown that they have posted on their events webpage, that’s only 24 days away at the time of this writing.


ASUS Transformer tablet teased for Computex 2013 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Amazon smartphone duo with glasses-free 3D eye tracking tipped

Amazon is reading a pair of smartphones and an audio-streaming device, new leaks claim, with one of the phones using eye-tracking and a glasses-free 3D display for hands-off navigation. The unannounced gadgets are the handiwork of Amazon’s Lab126 hardware division, the WSJ‘s sources reveal, with the high-end smartphone relying upon retina-tracking to allow users to dig through a floating hologram-like interface.

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“Using retina-tracking technology, images on the smartphone would seem to float above the screen like a hologram and appear three-dimensional at all angles” the insiders claim. “Users may be able to navigate through content using just their eyes.”

That’s only one of a number of smartphones Amazon is working on, with at least two tipped to reach the market. Fewer details are known about the second phone, which is known – alongside the other hardware – as Project A, B, C, and D within Lab126. The clandestine development is internally referred to as the “Alphabet Projects” its said.

As for the the media-streamer, that’s said to be an audio-only product, and could potentially be similar to a Sonos. Interestingly, despite previous rumors in April about Amazon working on a set-top box through which it would deliver streaming media such as on-demand Amazon Prime video, this musical product is said to be a different project.

In fact, Amazon is apparently looking to hardware on a grand scale, though the sources did also suggest that any or all of the projects could be axed before they actually reach the marketplace. That could be down to financial or other concerns, they suggest, or simply deciding that the smartphones and other devices aren’t ready for prime-time.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t come as a huge surprise to hear that Amazon is flirting with new products, particularly in mobility. The company’s ambitions in the smartphone space have been widely-rumored since before even the Kindle Fire tablets were released, with Amazon expected to use a heavily-customized version of Android tailored to suit its digital media sales ambitions.

As for the media streamer possibility, with Amazon already having an MP3 download store, and the Amazon Cloud Player service streaming content from the online locker to users’ smartphones, funneling it instead to home audio equipment doesn’t seem too far fetched. In that case, Amazon’s tablets and potential smartphone could then become a touchscreen remote, navigating through playlists.

Of course, glasses-free 3D has been met with mixed – though generally negative – reactions from the public when companies have tried to use it in mobile devices. The Nintendo 3DS, for instance, has struggled to carve a niche out, despite its relatively unique feature of 3D gameplay, while LG’s attempts to put glasses-free 3D in phones in the shape of the Optimus 3D also failred to spawn a sequel.

One possibility is that by using an eye-tracking system, the 3D effect could be considerably more impressive. Currently glasses-free systems lack precision, and can appear more like layers of stacked images than true 3D. Factoring in more accurate gaze-tracking, however, could improve on that, making a true 3D interface more usable.


Amazon smartphone duo with glasses-free 3D eye tracking tipped is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Amazon reportedly developing multiple smartphones, including one with a 3D display

Amazon reportedly developing smartphone with 3D display

Remember the EVO 3D? Swap out the HTC logo for an Amazon one, and you just might be onto something. According to a new Wall Street Journal report, one of the world’s most famed forkers of Android is looking to expand its mobile portfolio by adding the one crucial device it lacks: a phone. As the story goes, the company has been toiling on a pair of smartphones as well as an “audio-only streaming device,” all to “expand its reach beyond its Kindle Fire line of tablet computers.” If you’ll recall, we’ve heard that Amazon was dabbling in similar works since at least 2010, but the notion of expanding the Amazon ecosystem is now more pertinent. One of those phones is a higher-end device that offers up a glasses-free 3D display — it’s bruited that it would use “retina-tracking technology” to enable visuals that “seem to float above the screen like a [Tupac?] hologram.” In fact, that eye-scrolling technology that was initially rumored to be a part of the Galaxy S4 may instead make its debut on Amazon hardware.

Of course, rumors of an Amazon phone have been running just about as long as rumors of a Facebook phone, but it seems that the company is (still) making a very concerted effort to further expand into the hardware arena. We’re told that the prototypes are being nurtured within Amazon’s Lab126 facility in Cupertino, “where each of the devices have been under development, the efforts are known as Project A, B, C and D, or collectively as the Alphabet Projects.” If all goes well, Amazon could release at least some of these products in the coming months, but there’s also the chance that every last one of ’em could be “shelved because of performance, financial or other concerns.” Come to think of it, it’s been a hot minute since Amazon threw a launch party for anything — what say we change that, Jeff?

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Source: The Wall Street Journal