In Other News: 02/05/2013.

• Call of Duty: Ghosts has gone straight to the top of the most popular chart on Amazon despite the game only being a pre-order! It seems that CoD hasn't quite lost its appeal just yet !
  Via Slashgear.

• According to rumours today there's meant to be a whole host of new Windows Phones coming out this summer. Phones from Huawei, Nokia, Samsung and HTC are rumoured, while we don't doubt that this is possible, we want something more concrete than Reddit before we report this in a big way, if you're interested check out the source link below!
  Via PhoneArena.

• iOS 6.1.4 is landing on iPhone 5's at the moment, the update features an updated audio profile for the speakerphone, it appears to only be rolling out on that device and there was no beta test period, so we can assume that it will only be affecting iPhone 5's!
  Via MacRumors.

• The guys at Modaco have found a helpful use for that Wii Fit balance board which you haven't used quite as much as you planned to! Well it turns out that if you download an Android app and follow the steps on their website you can have some handy internet connected scales in no time! It's pretty sweet, head here to check it out!

• Talking of Nintendo kit, a group of hackers claimed to have manipulated the Wii U system sufficiently to allow for games to be played for a USB stick or hard disk drive. Nintendo deny the claims at the moment, we'll have to wait and see which way this one goes!
  Via PocketLint.

• Facebook has been awarded nearly $2.8 million because numerous groups have taken urls which are misspellings of their facebook.com domain name. Basically because it's such an easy thing to misspell certain sites the US government stopped people using addresses which attract traffic from misspellings in a bit to make money off of them. The ruling punished the owners of over 100 domain names, things such as fadebook.com, rfacebook.com and wwwfaceboobs.com were all found guilty.
  Via TheVerge.

• Dreamworks have splashed a cool $33 million on a YouTube channel called AwesomenessTV. The channels has over 14 million subscribers and has had 800 million views so far! Is this the first high profile buyout of a YouTube channel?
  Via Slashgear.

And finally, we're not sure if you've seen this before but Paul O'Brian tweeted about the Nexus 4 wired headset! We'd never seen it before, but it looks pretty sweet! If you're interested head over to Google Play to check it out!

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In Other News: 05/04/2013

• BlackBerry's new qwerty-equipped Q10 is now up for pre-order and Phones4U is seemingly the most compelling place to order it from in the UK! If you get in quick (among the first 300 people) you'll get a totally free 64GB PlayBook thrown in! The phone is available for £36 a month on a contract or alternatively you can get one for £549.95 SIM-free! To get the deals check here!
  Via Engadget.

• Firefox have updated their browser's beta streams for Android and desktop users. Android users will son have open-source fonts to choose from to replace the default options and there's also some HTML5 compatibility tweaks. Desktop beta users will get more "do not track" options as well as the choice to re-open tab thumbnails that've previously been closed.
  Via Engadget.

• HMV have been bought out by Hilco in a £50 million deal. That deal will mean that 66 stores will go as will 930 jobs. There will however be 2,500 jobs saved and a tonne of stores kept open as part of the deal. There's also said to be a renewed emphasis on 'enhanced music and visual range' and electricals will not be sold by the company any more! To see which stores will be saved and which will be closed then check here!
  Via HotUKDeals and TechRadar.

• Nokia have released their app Nokia Music for both Windows 8 and Windows RT devices! The app is essentially a full-sized version of the app for phones, but everything's correct and present so head over to the Windows Store here to get it!
  Via TheVerge. 

• Nokia Lumia 720 is now available in the UK for £22 per month on contract or £300 on pay as you go! You can get the phone from O2 here!
  Via Engadget.

• Google has confirmed that their forked version of Webkit called Blink, will soon be powering their Chrome browser. The guys are working fast and the new engine should be availabe in Chrome 28 in about 10 weeks time!
  Via AndroidBeat.

• It turns out HTC's new Facebook powered smartphone, the HTC First, will run stock Android beneath that Home launcher. The phone is looking to be around $450 sim-free so it's not quite cheap enough to be a viable stock alternative to the LG Nexus 4. Facebook also confirmed that their launcher will eventually have ads, but they won't be tailored to users, they will just be like they are on the current Facebook app.
  Via Clove and Slashgear.

• Some of HP's execs are on the way out! Check out the Tweet below for more details.

HP Chairman Ray Lane resigns, Ralph Whitworth to be interim chairman
— Reuters Tech (@ReutersTech) April 4, 2013

• LG's Optimus 4X HD is currently getting an update to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean!
  Via UnwiredView. 

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03/10/2012

RIM release Playbook OS 2.1!

   RIM and their Playbook in particular are interesting entities. The Playbook's themselves are great little devices and they are selling extremely cheaply at the moment. But, RIM has also had a good track record with their updates too! Every time the company has promised some improvements they have arrived, if slightly late a couple of times.

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11/06/2012

Intel and the 'Single-core is better' claim.

   Intel has caused a stir today by claiming that Android only needs single-core processors. I'm pretty sure everyone in the industry would beg to differ because dual-core support arrived on Android in version 2.3.4 which arrived in April of 2011. 

   

   The company went on to say that in Android 4.0 ICS, dual-cores processing is of little benefit most of the time. Intel also claims that its testing showed the dual cores could be detrimental to performance, especially in battery life terms. 

“If you are in a non-power constrained case, I think multiple cores make a lot of sense because you can run the cores full out, you can actually heavily load them and/or if the operating system has a good thread scheduler. A lot of stuff we are dealing with, thread scheduling and thread affinity, isn’t there yet and on top of that, largely when the operating system goes to do a single task, a lot of other stuff stops. So as we move to multiple cores, we’re actually putting a lot of investment into software to fix the scheduler and fix the threading so if we do multi-core products it actually takes advantage of it."

The news in brief: 

• Microsoft has apparently checked Nokia’s books and decided to end all buy-out agreements according to rumours around the web today.
• LG has launched their Optimus 4X around Europe this week and we can expect this device to offer a good alternative to the One X and the Galaxy S3!
• Google have confirmed that there is over 900,000 Android activations everyday, we expect them to hit a million activations a day by the Autumn.
• Project Magenta is an open source Linux variety designed to offer a convincing imitation of iOS and it looks set to be a very successful and interesting project.

Don't forget to check back later as we'll have all of the juicy details from WWDC covered as soon as possible after the event!

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