Motorola has got something a little different in mind for the future of the smartphone and that bit of deviation is called Project Ara. The smartphone company, in conjunction with another outfit called Phonebloks, is hoping to short-circuit the cycle of smartphone upgrades by created a modular phone, allowing users to snap in upgraded components or adding features as they are needed. Project Ara is a “a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones” based around an endoskeleton for a device which is able to snap in modules that form the working components of a smartphone. Motorola says…
Author: Brett Venter
Samsung’s first TV spot is out for the curved Galaxy Round handset and it’s… a bit of a weird one. The short advertisement shows a person running their thumb lovingly over everything from a microphone to avocados, calling to mind the motions that users will have to use when using the Galaxy Round when it sees release. Why this motion is important isn’t really explained and the barrage of curved (in one way or another) objects are just too widely spaced for them to all have some cultural relevance to the Koreans who will see the ad. The Verge points…
Apple dropped their fourth quarter results yesterday, reporting a 26% increase in iPhone sales which apparently set a new record for the company over the September period. However there was a drop in net profit even though Apple’s revenues were up compared to last year. Cupertino said that the company posted a quarterly revenue of $37.5 billion, with a resulting net profit of $7.5 billion. Apple’s figures a year ago were a quarterly revenue of $36 billion with a net profit of $8.2 billion. Apple also detailed their sales figures for the quarter, saying that the company shifted 33.8 million…
The battle of the curved handsets is underway as both LG and Samsung have their own takes on what a curved display should be. Samsung has already detailed the specifications for the Galaxy Round but up till now we’ve only seen rumours and renders of the G Flex from LG. LG have taken away our speculation though and we’re happy about that, the company has released the specifications for the Korean version of the G Flex handset which is expected to become available in Korea in November this year. Availability elsewhere is still to be announced. The G Flex will…
Twitter’s IPO (Initial Public Offering) is no secret but the company has been relatively mum about the expected prices for shares of the company when it goes public on the stock exchange. Last week the company revealed the price range for shares when it does make the jump to being publicly traded, pegging costs between $17 (R167) and $20 (R197) per share. Based on these prices and the number of shares that Twitter will have available (70 million), the micro-blogging service is expected to raise some $1.4 billion for the company. Twitter has been valued at up to $11 billion…
Microsoft has posted its earnings for the first (financial) quarter of 2014, reporting record revenues for the company in spite of a few dips in areas like Windows OEM. The company has reported that it saw gross revenues of $18.529 billion, up from $16.008 billion from the same period last year. Net income (that’s profit, folks) for the company over the quarter was $5.2 billion thanks to several sectors which saw growth. About the only area which dipped was Windows’ OEM Â market, something which can be blamed on the general global decline of the PC market. Everything else, from ad…
Microsoft has decided to go big in London by erecting a massive Surface tablet in Trafalgar Square. The company has one-upped the recently announced Surface 2 by creating a roughly 383-inch tablet that lives outside. Microsoft’s huge tablet is a very large publicity stunt, with the display measuring 27 feet by 17 feet (8.3m x 5.1m). The keyboard constructed at the base is connected to an actual Surface Pro 2, meaning that the keyboard actually functions with the Windows 8.1 operating system which is onscreen. Tech Website The Verge went on location to try it out, reporting that the Twitter…
Warner Bros. have released a launch trailer for Batman: Arkham Origins which is due to go on sale in South Africa tomorrow. The two-minute short places players into the game’s whole theme rather easily: it’s Christmas, Black Mask has decided to take down Batman and there are a lot of assassins joining the party. A couple of those assassins can be seen in the trailer, the likes of Deathstroke, Copperhead and Firefly all have their combat segments hinted at and there’s a fair bit of gameplay from the initial stages of the game. Stuff is busy with their review of…
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch is a fairly interesting device but so far it has only worked in conjunction with the Galaxy Note 3 handset from the company. That’s due to change fairly soon, as Samsung says that an incoming Android 4.3 update will render several Samsung smartphones compatible with the Galaxy Gear. Android 4.3 updates are due to start rolling out for the Galaxy S4 in Germany this month before heading to other locations and handsets around the world and several phones will find themselves smartwatch-capable following the upgrade. Samsung’s Galaxy S4, SIII and Note II are on that list…
Apple’s event last night saw several announcement, from the free availability of OS X Mavericks for those who have OS X 10.6 or better to the iPad Air to the refreshing of the MacBook Pro product line. Another announcement was the updated iPad mini, which will finally be getting its tiny self a Retina display to call its own. Retina for the iPad mini is something that users have been calling for and Apple has obliged, adding the 2,048 x 1,536 screen to the 7.9-inch tablet. Users who update to the newest model will be getting a pixel density of…