Gareth and Matt are here with another UK update on the mobile front.
Featuring Gareth and Matt. This week we discuss the rumours surrounding HTC replacement for the HTC One, dubbed the HTC M8. We also look forward to the iPhone 6 and what that may hold in store as well as a discussion abut what’s happening with Sony’s laptop division and Chromebooks that are waiting in the wings.
After a long and gruelling 6 months the SDK for Google’s Chromecast officially became available for purchase, so we can now expect to see a wave of apps pouring through the floodgates for Google popular TV plugin. At this point in time there are only a handful of services available for the Chromecast out of the box and with several similar devices coming to market it makes total sense for Google to launch the SDK to increase the Chromecast’s standing in the home entertainment market.
Check it out here!
Looks as thought Apple might just be launching the iWatch later this year according to new reports from The New York Times and 9to5Mac. An unnamed Apple employee said that Apple’s Bob Mansfield, the senior vice president for technologies, is “directly involved” with and iWatch, and has been “heavily involved” with “exploring devices, sensors and technologies within Apple that can monitor people’s health and connect to an iPhone.” Another Apple employee said that former Adobe executive Kevin Lynch, who joined Apple last year, is currently working on software for the watch.
One of the big rumours surrounding iOS 8 is the inclusion of a “Healthbook” that is touted to keep track of fitness statistics including steps taken, calories burned, miles walked, but also monitor weight loss. Additionally, Healthbook would monitor important tuning like blood pressure, hydration levels, heart rate “and potentially several other blood-related data points, such as glucose levels.” For all this, an iWatch would be required, a product that’s described to be “designed to be heavily reliant on the iPhone.”
Looks like a red Nexus 5 will arrive in the near future. The Nexus 5 has been ruimours to get a bit of paint thrown at it much like several other leading brands out there and could be set to launch in the Google Play Store as early as the beginning February 4th. It would be unlikely for the Nexus 5 will have anything different under the hood and still boasts the 5-inch 1080p display, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, an 8 megapixel camera, either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage and more. No mention of price just now however, this being Google, we have no reason to believe they would ask you to pay more for simply a colour.
Here is a bit of news for Chrome OS and Lenovo fans out there – the popular PC manufacturer has just announced two new laptops! The Thinkpad 11e and the Thinkpad Yoga 11e come in two versions, sporting Windows 8 and Chrome OS (wouldn’t it be nice if they could dual-boot?).
These Chromebooks are said to be aimed towards education, but they seem to be great options for the regular consumer too. Specs were not specified, but we do have some details you might want to know.
As the name entails, the ThinkPad 11e sports what is now the standard in terms of Chromebook displays. Of course, we are talking about an 11.6-inch HD, LED display. HD probably does mean 1366x768p resolution, which is what most other 11.6-inch Chromebook displays have.
You will also get “over 8 hours of battery life”, but that is not what makes the ThinkPad 11e special. Its main feature is its construction, which comes with a rugged nature. The laptop will feature “rubber bumpers, reinforced ports and stronger hinges.” It’s a Chromebook built to last.
The ThinkPad Yoga 11e will not be as resistant, but it will be a much more functional and flexible (literally) tool. This laptop takes on Lenovo’s signature Yoga design, allowing a laptop to take on 4 different configurations. It adapts to the type of use you want to give it at any given moment.
You can transform Yoga laptops in the following configurations: laptop, tablet, tent and stand. You can see the image below to see examples.
The TinkPad Yoga 11e also comes with an 11.6-inch display, but it sports an IPS panel. This will give the screen much better viewing angles and color accuracy. It’s also important to note that this is the third Chroembook to come with a touchscreen! I know many of you will fancy that.
All versions are set to be released during the Spring of 2014. Price is a bit more vague – Lenovo says the Chromebooks will start at $349. Are you getting one of these bad boys?
Towards the end of 2013 Sony announced that a firmware for the DSC QX10 and QX100 lens cameras for use with Smartphones would be released in January. With only a few days left to meet this target, the promised update has appeared on the Sony Asia support site. At the time of writing the UK site still doesn’t show the download.
New features for the version 2.0 update are:
I updated my QX10 yesterday and the time taken to connect to my Nexus 5 has reduced drastically and the connection itself seems to be much more stable. These were two issues that I highlighted in my review and once I have had a chance to play with the the camera with the new firmware some more I will update the review with my new thoughts.
The update was painless and all of the steps required are clearly explained in the updater software. It seems that the existing firmware on the lenses is a mix of v1 and v0.1 so it looks like some units were sold with an earlier release and no update was offered.
If you’d like to grab the update now, try these links.
Sources within the supply chain serving the South Korean electronics giant, are reporting that Samsung “will no longer launch conventional notebook models except Chromebooks” from 2015. ‘Samsung will no longer launch conventional notebook models except Chromebooks…’
The company was one of the first on the block with Google’s thin-client cloud-based OS, launching one of the first Chromebooks back in 2011. A refreshed version of their best-selling ‘Samsung Chromebook’ is rumoured to arrive near Easter, utilising an eight-core ARM processor.
A rumour like this is probably most unlikely however when thinking of Dell’s decision to discontinue shipping Windows 7 on their hardware there might be something in it. With that said, the report does give a potential reasoning for such a switch. Samsung expected to ship 17 million notebooks in 2013 but only managed to shift 12 million. As a result, insiders say the company has lowered its notebook forecasts for 2014 to 7 million units. Do it make sense to drop an entire platform when notebook and laptop sales are down and tablet sales are up?
While Google still works on getting Google Glass ready for official public consumption, the company has been to building five simple games for the wearable technology in the hopes that it will encourage developers to make more games for it. There are already a couple of games out from third parties however on a whole things are pretty sparse.
These new games are all current available on Glassware to try out for those few people who were approved and managed for fork out $1500 for an early version of Google Glass. If you’re looking for some seriously advanced gaming to be found with these five titles, you won’t find it. These games are pretty simple but do illustrate different things you can do with Google Glass in conjunction with games.
Interested in seeing what these games are like? Well lucky for you Google has released a short video showing each one which you can watch above. It will be interesting to see if this does spur on some additional developer interest for Google Glass when it comes to games.
Google announced their newest upgrade to the Google Glass wearable smart-glasses, only this time it isn’t a software or hardware upgrade, but is actually a structural one. They now have prescription glass frames available that are specifically designed to fit with Google Glass. They are called the Titanium Collection, and that doesn’t just describe their aesthetics. These new Google Glass frames are literally made of ultra-light titanium alloys.
Their Titanium Collection includes “four feather-light titanium frames and two new styles of twist-on shades, designed just for you.” Now you can consider getting Google Glass without worrying about looking like a full-blown dork, just a half-dork! (We kid about this because some of us here at HQ are actually becoming more intrigued by this device regardless of how it looks to other.)
Thanks to HTC’s own Android update status page, we knew that the KitKat update for the HTC One was pretty imminent and today many users will have been presented with a notification to say that there was indeed an update available for their HTC One.
At the moment I’m installing the update on my own HTC One and so far it seems to be pretty painless.
The latest Android 4.4.2 KitKat update promises the following:
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.