Hasta La Gadget!

Starting today, San Francisco residents will have something else to brag about besides their quality of life and hosting tech extravaganzas: free WiFi. The silicon valley hub joins New York and parts of France in receiving the service from provider GOWEX, which is now live in districts like Union Square and Marina thanks to 450 smart WiFi zones. As with the Big Apple, residents and tourists will see download speeds up to 1Mbps, while GOWEX will see dollars from carriers (via network offloading) and advertisers in return. To use it, you’ll need to download the free iOS or Android apps from their respective stores — which we might just do ourselves, considering a certain little developer’s conference in town at the moment.

Filed under: Wireless, Internet

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We’ve seen enough images of the Huawei Ascend P6 to know that the thing exists, but the speculation on its specs hasn’t been confirmed by any stretch. Smartphone rumormeister @evleaks has a few specs to throw our way: the P6 will supposedly feature a 4.7-inch 720p display, a remarkably thin 6.18mm profile, 1.5GHz quad-core (likely in-house) processor and Emotion UI (seen above). Additionally, we’re now expecting to see an 8MP BSI rear camera with a 4cm macro, accompanied by an impressive 5MP front-facing cam with a feature called Face Enhance. We’re just a week away from having official confirmation of all these specs, but this is just enough to tie you over until then — or, until the next leak appears online, at the very least.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Source: @evleaks (Twitter)

iPhones and iPads running Apple’s new iOS 7 later this year may be able to roam more easily between WiFi hotspots, thanks to quietly added support for Hotspot 2.0. The feature, confirmed among the new functionality in iOS 7 that Apple didn’t have sufficient keynote time to detail yesterday, builds on the Wi-Fi Alliance’s “Certified

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We’ve been hearing mumblings that the next version of Android will get a new Bluetooth stack with v4.0 Low Energy (LE) goodness for a while now. That, at least, explains why the Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus have been re-sent through the Bluetooth SIG in order to gain approval for the newer standard. What’s less clear is what the ASUS K008, an apparently new 7-inch slate from the company, is doing supporting v4.0 LE. Our dour belief is that ASUS is merely future-proofing its forthcoming MeMo Pad HD 7, but perhaps “K008” is optimistic latin for “second-generation Nexus 7 with Android 4.3.”

Filed under: Wireless, ASUS

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Via: Android Community, PocketNow

Source: Bluetooth SIG, (2)

Amongst the significant changes and feature enhancements we’ve already seen on iOS 7, it appears that AirDrop will be featured in the new version of Apple’s mobile operating system. The file-sharing feature will be available on the iPhone 5, iPad 4th gen, iPad mini and 5th-gen iPod touch, but apparently nothing earlier than that. The peer-to-peer feature was briefly shown off at WWDC in the Control Center, and it means there is “no need to wander around the room bumping your phones.” We wonder if this means we shouldn’t expect any NFC capabilities in the next version of the iPhone or iPad, but it’s still a little too early to make that correlation.

Here’s Apple’s official statement on AirDrop for iOS7:

“AirDrop is an entirely new way to quickly and easily share content with people nearby. When you’ve got something you want to share, AirDrop shows you your contacts close by. Just select who you want to share with and AirDrop does the rest. AirDrop transfers are peer-to-peer so you can use it anywhere, without any network or set up required, and transfers are fully encrypted so your content is protected and private.”

Follow all of our WWDC 2013 coverage at our event hub.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Apple

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