HTC has been releasing teaser clips on its official website for some time now that show bits and pieces of the upcoming HTC One, also known as the HTC M7.
Now all the clips have been released and they play one after the other on HTC’s website. But if you don’t want giant numbers in front of the video (there is a countdown on the site for the February 19 event) or the pause between them, watch the video below.
(There is no audio)
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The original Cut the Rope has been a rousing success. Known for its simple yet challenging gameplay and adorable animation style, the game was a hit with all age groups. It later spawned a sequel in the form of Cut the Rope: Experiments, which introduced new levels and gameplay mechanics.
Now, a year and a half after Experiments came out, developers ZeptoLab have released the third installment in the series, labelled Cut the Rope: Time Travel. The new game features the now familiar gameplay with some new twists, such as an extra character and not one but two candies in each level. Let’s see how this one performs.
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Title
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Cut the Rope: Time Travel
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Developer
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ZeptoLab
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Platform
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iOS
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Android
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Release Date
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April 2013
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April 2013
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Content rating
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4+
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Everyone
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Size
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32.5MB / 71MB
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Varies with device
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Price
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$0.99 / $2.99
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Free (with ads) / $0.99
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Cut the Rope: Time Travel borrows much from the previous two games. The main difference here is, however, there are two hungry monsters to feed. The premise is that the game’s protagonist Om Nom has gone back in time and comes across his ancestors, a different one in each level. So you now have two monsters in each level and two candies to feed to each of them. You have to feed them individually and you can’t just feed one monster both candies. Also, if you drop either or both the game ends.
Once you wrap your mind around this concept the rest of the game is classic Cut the Rope. There are several new mechanics, involving metal chains that can only be cut using blades, ability to pause time and freeze candy and other objects mid-air, bombs that explode when you drop candy on them and the resultant explosion can then be used to propel the candy to a desired point, flying candy that floats around and follows the motion of the other, regular candy and a large clock that can be used to move some of the objects on the screen around. My favorite, however, is the one where you have just one monster on the screen at a time and you have to use the candy to flick a switch on the screen for the other one to appear from behind a stone platform.
Other than these, Cut the Rope: Time Travel features some of the mechanics from two games, such as portals, rockets, bouncing platforms, etc. The old mechanics coupled with the new ones are enough to make the game feel fresh.
The problem is that Cut the Rope: Time Travel is too easy. The original game has some incredibly tough levels that will leave you scratching your head for hours or even days but Time Travel can be finished in an afternoon. As usual, you first have to figure out the way to deliver the candy to the monsters, which usually takes less than 30 seconds in most levels and after that it’s a matter of timing to execute the solution, which for veterans of the game shouldn’t be too difficult. You can blaze through most levels with consummate ease and only a handful of levels pose any real challenge. It doesn’t help that there are just 90 levels in the game, most of which can be completed in under a minute.
Visually, Cut the Rope: Time Travel looks identical to the previous two games in the series. This is not exactly a bad thing as both of them are visually stunning and have some of the most wonderful character animations in a 2D game. Cut the Rope: Time Travel ups the ante by introducing a few more of those amusing and adorable animations and the new characters also look great. They do, however, behave identically to our usual Om Nom and the different ancestors bring no change to the gameplay, which is a disappointment.
The sound in the game is fine but nothing special. The background music is new but sounds similar to the one in the first game and not nearly as memorable. The sound effects for the characters are great, though, especially their mumbling when they fall asleep after you feed one of them.
Cut the Rope: Time Travel is a good third installment in a series of very enjoyable games. The new game brings with it some new gameplay mechanics but maintains some of the best parts from the older games. Unfortunately, most people will find the game a bit too easy and miss some of the challenge from the first two games. This game is great for kids, who will find the gameplay and especially the visuals very enjoyable but adults won’t be as amused.
Rating: 7/10
Pros: Brings an interesting new twist to familiar gameplay, amazing visuals and character animations
Cons: Far too easy
Download
iOS: iPhone ? iPad
Android: Free ? Premium
H.265, the successor to the highly popular H.264 video codec, used for over 80 percent of all the online video, has been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), allowing it to be used for the creation of video content that is significantly smaller in size than what we have today.
Known also as High Efficiency Video Coded, H.265 allows file sizes that can be around half as much as the current H.264 encoded videos while maintaining the video quality. This allows content providers to supply much smaller files with the same quality, thus reducing the time required to download or stream the video.
But there is another advantage to this. Because the file sizes are now lower, you can have higher resolution videos, such as in 4K, without having obscenely large file sizes.
Of course, for all this to happen, content creators will need to adopt the format quickly for encoding their content. Moreover, hardware and software will also need to be updated to support playback. Hopefully, both these things will happen sooner rather than later.
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We have been hearing rumors about upcoming 7/8-inch Windows 8 tablets, with Microsoft itself said to be working on one. This leaked Acer tablet, however, is the first to confirm that rumor.
What you see above is the Acer Iconia W3-810, a 7-inch tablet running Windows 8. As you can see the device has been optimized for use in portrait mode, with the Windows button placed near the narrow edge. However, the logo is strangely aligned sideways and favors the landscape orientation.
The tablet is said to have mid-range level specs, with a 1.8GHz Intel Atom processor powering the device. It will also be compatible with accessories such as a flip cover and the keyboard dock seen above.
Not much else is known about this device right now but we’ll keep you posted as we find out.
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Just when you though you couldn’t take any more of Angry Birds in any form here comes another new game. As we have mentioned it before, Angry Birds Star Wars is the fifth game in the Angry Birds series by Rovio and is based on, no prices for guessing, Star Wars.
Rovio released a couple of teaser trailers this month but now a slightly longer video has been released, this time showing some of the gameplay. And you know what? It actually looks interesting.
Well it’s not fundamentally different from what you did in the previous Angry Bird games. Except this time the birds have lightsabers (at least one of them does) and that’s severely cool. You will see the red bird taking a swipe at the pigs using its lightsaber, which you probably activate the same way you activate special abilities in Angry Bird games: by tapping on the screen when they are airborne. There is also a pink bird dressed as Princess Leia who can shoot tractor beams to dismantle giant robots.
I’m hoping there are more such cool birds in this game. We should find out next week on November 8 when the game releases on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, PC, Mac and Windows 8.
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The Wi-Fi only Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been selling in the States since June, but those of you holding out for Verizon’s LTE model will be pleased to hear that they only have to wait a couple of days more until a promise launch that’s due in this Thursday.
An official-looking, but not officially released slide pins the launch date of the 4G LTE-enabled Galaxy Tab 10.1 on July 28th.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 for Verizon is available on the carrier’s site, but only for pre-order right now. Here’s what you need to know before Thursday – the 16GB version costs $530 with a 2-year contract (or $630 without), while the 32GB version is $630 on a 2-year contract ($730 without).
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 for Verizon will be available in Verizon stores and on their web site. You have a choice between Metallic Grey and White colors for the tablet, but keep in mind that the White version is available only through direct fulfillment. By the way, the tablet takes only microSIM cards.
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We think you’ll all agree that currently existing car headlights are really bad when faced with heavy rain or snow. The light they emit gets reflected from raindrops and snow flakes and obstruct a clear view of the road.
What if we told you that there is already a solution to this problem thanks to the latest invention by some Carnegie Mellon scientists. Using some impressively accurate cameras and super-fast computers they managed to predict the trajectory of each rain drop and stream the light between them.
It may sound mind-blowing but they actually got a working prototype and at about 18 mph, they were able to reduce glare from rain drops by 70% with only a 5% loss of light intensity. Snowflakes are larger and slower and therefore more difficult to track, which means 15% of light is lost and around 60% of the snowflakes are avoided.
Here’s a video that shows the whole thing in action.
It’s certainly impressive, but sadly the invention far from prime time just yet. Even its creators can’t yet give us a time frame as of when it might make it to actual production vehicles.
Via
Google has released an update for the Chrome browser on iOS, which introduces interoperability with other Google apps installed on your device. Now, you can choose to open links in YouTube, Maps, Google+ and Drive applications. So, for example, you click on a location, you can now open it in the Maps app instead of within the browser.
Other changes include improvements to voice search, fullscreen mode on iPad, access to browser history (which was shockingly absent until now) and a new data saving mode, which compresses pages to reduce bandwidth usage and page load times. Other than that there are the usual bug fixes and performance improvements.
You can download the updated version from the link below.
App Store
Yesterday, Nokia finally went through with its long-coming plan to disallow unauthorized users to download from their online repository for firmware updates, Navifirm+.
It has since been revealed that users who retained their Navifirm+ caches are still able to download updates from the repository.
If you’re unfamiliar with Navifirm+, it was an online resource which allowed users to download updates for Symbian and later Windows Phone handsets, sometimes even before official release.
Despite the official restriction by Nokia, if you still have your Naviform+ cache intact, you can still get access, and the good news is you can pop in cache backups from other people. For how long, however, is anyone’s guess, but in the meanwhile, make a copy of your Naviform+ 1.7 ‘cache’ folder, and check out this thread.
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A groundbreaking new Android app is rising in popularity in the Google Play store. It’s called Solar Charger and lets you use the phone’s screen to charge the battery with sunlight.
Yes, of course it’s a fake. The app’s description says so itself, in case your common sense failed you. It’s still a very interesting app, here’s why.
First off, the app’s creator got pissed off at all the people who don’t bother reading the description before downloading an app and then wonder why it doesn’t work. Solar Charger is currently sitting at 1,500 angry one star ratings, but considering it has seen over half a million downloads, the number of angry people is probably much greater.
The app also features a “Hall of shame” and a “Hall of fame”. The first one is a list with all the angry reviews the app got, which can be a very entertaining read. The second one features five-star ratings and humorous content, a lot of them are worth a chuckle too.
And finally, it shows just how many people are vulnerable to scams – if they didn’t read the description, not to mentioned failed to realize than an LCD screen and a photovoltaic cell have nothing in common, they probably didn’t read the app’s permissions either.
A silly soundboard app shouldn’t be requesting access to your contacts and the phone’s internal storage – that would be an instant red flag. But if you just clicked install, then you didn’t notice it and you might have opened yourself up for malicious apps.
Here’s the link for the Solar Charger app – you can show it off to your friends and see how long it takes them to put two and two together. Reading the reviews is quite fun too.
Thanks to Gary Law for the tip!
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Gameloft has released a new trailer for their upcoming hack and slash action game based on the Unreal Engine.
Wild Blood is a third person action game based in the medieval times and follows the story of Sir Lancelot. The trailer shows off the expected impressive graphics along with some exciting combat elements. Having said that, Wild Blood does bear strong resemblances to the God of War and Infinity Blade games at times.
The game will be releasing today on iOS and some time this month on Android.
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The BlackBerry PlayBook barely made it to stores’ shelves and already it fell into the hands of the guys over at iFixit and was carefully stripped to pieces. The guts of RIM’s shiny new tablet showed (almost) nothing surprising and scored a 7/10 repairability.
The front panel is made of magnesium with the glass above the display glued to it… That makes the glass harder to replace, but if the LCD below is okay that’s all that will need replacing.
Also, the two cameras of the PlayBook are attached to a single assembly along with the control buttons on the top. If one of those buttons needs replacing, the costly cameras will have to be swapped out too.
Curiously, each of the two “speakers” is actually made from two speakers, so the BlackBerry PlayBook has four speakers, though it still plays stereo (it’s done for loudness).
Read more on the PlayBook teardown over at iFixit � they have plenty more gorgeous shots of tablet innards too.
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The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a split personality – it’s either powered by a Snapdragon 600 chipset (the I9505) or by Samsung’s own Exynos 5 Octa (the I9500). It took a while before it became clear which model goes to which country, but now it’s time to find out the answer to a more important question – does it matter?
Typically, Samsung uses Qualcomm chipsets for its US models (due to the chipsets built-in LTE support) and sold their Exynos smartphones elsewhere. Now, the situation is different and the Snapdragon-based model is more common, perhaps due to low manufacturing capacity for the new eight core Exynos chipset.
We have to admit we initially found the Exynos 5 Octa model more appealing, as it promised the holy grail of mobile computing – tons of computing power from the four Cortex-A15 cores and low-power usage when the four Cortex-A7 cores take over.
Note: The results of the Exynos 5 Octa based Galaxy S4 (the I9500) are marked in red, while those of the Snapdragon 600 based model (the I9505) are in yellow).
There’s more to power usage than just the CPU cores though as the call test shows. It seems that Samsung still has some way to go before its chipsets match the power efficiency Qualcomm delivers (the company is a market leader for mobile modems for a reason).
Not that 11 hours of talk time on a single charge we got from the Exynos S4 is bad, but a difference of over 60% is massive.
The web browser test gives the CPU something to do, but the result comes out almost equal – there’s less than half an hour advantage for the S600 model. Our web browser test is more intensive than casual browsing, so you might be able to squeeze out more than 7h of browsing out of the I9500 Galaxy S4.
Surprisingly, video playback also went in favor of the I9505 and by a full hour, too. It’s still in the Top 5 (the iPad mini doesn’t count since it’s a tablet), but since we test with an SD video, the chipset would have been anything but heavily loaded. Perhaps a more efficient hardware video decoder in the Snapdragon trumps the power saving of running on Cortex-A7s.
Standby power usage turned out to be about equal for both versions of the Samsung Galaxy S4, but the extra endurance the Snapdragon-based I9505 had in the three tests give it a higher endurance rating. The I9500 and its Exynos 5 Octa chipset scored 65 hours, down from 69 hours for the I9505.
The endurance rating shows how long a phone can last between charges if you do an hour each of calling, web browsing and watching videos. In practice, both versions will probably give you about the same time between charges as the battery of the I9505 will be very low over those last 4 extra hours.
Unless you are a heavy talker that is – long calls on a 3G network will drain the I9500 battery noticeably quicker. Other than that, the Samsung I9500 Galaxy S4 is still one of the best performers in terms of battery life.
It might have taken Apple an year an a half to allow VoIP over cellular network but it only took Fring a couple of days to update their app to make use of that. Since yesterday one of the most popular chat clients for the iPhone is capable of doing voice and video calls over 3G networks.
Okay, so those video calls are kinda awkward without a front facing camera but it’s still something. At the very least you will be able to use that unlimited data plan of yours properly and cut down on your phone bill. Here goes a brief video demonstrating the app in action.
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Samsung has unveiled the multimedia-centric Series 5 Boost laptop for Korea and updated its Series 9, 5 and 3 ultrabooks with low-power Ivy Bridge processors.
The Series 5 Boost will come in 15″ and 17″ flavors, with a bright (300 nit) 1600 x 900 resolution display, JBL stereo speakers and either a Core i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge processor. Its availability is limited to Korea for now, and there’s also no word on pricing just yet.
As for the Series 3, 5 and 9 super-slim laptops Samsung has graced them with the low-voltage, power-saving Ivy Bridge processors. The Series 9 ultrabooks will be powered by a 1.7 GHz Core i5-3317U, offer a 1600 x 900 13.3″ or 15″ display and will be slightly thinner and lighter than their predecessors. The 13.3-incher starts at $1,299.99, while the 15″ version will cost $1,399.99.
The Series 5 devices will offer the same Core i5-3317U CPU for its 13.3″ and 14″ versions, which will be priced at $799.99 and $849.99 respectively. The Series 5 will also be offered in an AMD-powered edition, featuring the new quad-core A6-4455M Trinity APU – the 13.3″ and 14″ units will be priced at $699.99 and $849.99.
Finally the lower-end Series 3 will swap the Pentium processors for Sandy Bridge ones.
All of Samsung’s Series refreshed laptops have been upgraded with the lower consumption Bluetooth 4.0. Here are the product pages for the Series 9, Series 5 and Series 3 laptops.
Source (translated) | Via
Chrome OS R12, which should be the version the first “Chromebooks” ship with, has just entered the beta status of its development. The beta release brings security fixes, new features (including the improvements from Chrome browser v12) and bug fixes, including an Angry Birds related improvement which deserves a category of its own.
Here’s what improvements made their way into Chrome OS v12 beta:
The OS sports a new look and a file browser, new Flash player too, along with various optimizations (power, Gtalk), improved GSM/3G support and Verizon activation, Wi-Fi connectivity and an auto-update engine.
There are several bug fixes as well (you can look them over here) and a handful of security fixes.
From the Chrome 12 (the browser) update, Chrome OS 12 also gets hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, Safe Browsing protection against malicious files, launching apps from the Omnibox and a few others.
Taking into account the few weeks needed for beta testing, Chrome OS 12 should be ready just in time for the mid-June launch of the chromebooks. Okay, okay, Google doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to pushing its products beyond the beta stage, but lately they’ve been much more serious about it.
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Having the best time you can possible have is what going to the beach is all about. It’s sunny, you’ve hopefully brought friends along and there are plenty of activities to keep you happy like building castles made of sand (over the said friends) and whatnot. And here comes the Jetlev – a hybrid Jetpack, running on water, to up the level of the summer fun-having.
The Jetlev is made of three main components, but you’ll only need one on your body, which is very convenient. That would be a lightweight backpack, made out of carbon fiber. The other parts include a 10 meter hose to keep the water flowing to your backpack and an engine floating on water down below you. The engine sucks water and sends it through the hose to your backpack creating the needed lift to get you in the air. You navigate around with the two adjustable nozzles. The whole thing can give you a top speed of 35 km/h and a top altitude of 8.5 meters.
It took Canadian inventor Raymond Li over 10 years to create his invention and finally see it out there on the market and on its way to the beach. And hopefully, it’s going to be the beach me and my friends are visiting this summer. I can already picture it. “You’re going jet skiing, mate? – Nah, I’ll do some jet-leviing.”
Uhmm, they could probably use a better name.
Well, enough daydreaming. Jetlev does seem to be reserved only for 5 star resorts as not every resort can afford it. Price is �00,000 for just one of these bad boys so don’t expect it to pop up at your regular average-only resort any time soon.
Here’s a short video for you to enjoy!
Source
Nuance, the developer behind Dragon Naturally Speaking and many other voice operated technologies in consumer electronics, has created a voice-activated personal assistant which uses biometrics to uniquely identify a specific user.
This means that you’ll be able to tell your phone to do all sorts of things requiring secure identification by simply talking to your phone.
Unlike OS and device specific solutions such as Siri and S Voice, Nuance is launching a mobile SDK for Android and iOS, which developers can use to make their third party applications voice-operated.
Check out the video of Nina in action:
We can see Siri glowing green with jealously, although perhaps we’ll see a new and improved version come September 12th.
Via
LG unveiled its latest 5-inch HD Oxide mobile displays with 1mm slim bezel at the Society of Information Display 2013 held in Canada. The Korean company also demonstrated its flexible OLED HD panels at the event side by side with its Oxide displays.
The 5-inch Oxide display is likely to be a 720p variant, rather than a 1080p one. The latest panels from LG utilize the popular IPS technology, which makes use of wide viewing angles as already seen in other displays of this type.
The display also uses TFT Oxide technology, which consumes low power. The HD Oxide panels are rated at 250nits. However, LG expects a higher brightness level by the time of its availability.
Images of 5-inch HD Oxide displays
Unfortunately, there is no official word on the availability of the latest 5-inch HD Oxide mobile displays for now.
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Leica, the Rolls Royce of camera manufacturers, has announced the newest member of their flagship rangefinder cameras. The Leica M Monochrom is a very specialized camera that is designed to take just black and white pictures and nothing else.
Now before you start laughing and wonder how is this different than a regular camera shooting in black and white mode, let me explain. The sensors on digital cameras are literally color blind, which means they are sensitive to light but they cannot differentiate between colors. Because of this, normal digital cameras place a color filter array (CFA) on top of the sensor. Light passes through this filter and then gets separated into different colors, which are captured by the sensor and then combined later.
The problem with this arrangement is that most of the light is wasted when it passes through the color filter and a lot less of it reaches the sensor. However, on the M-Monochrom, there is no color filter over the sensor, so all the light coming in through the lens falls on the sensor, which makes the sensor capture much more light, thus getting significantly higher quality images, even in low light. Also, the process where the color information from the filters is then combined, also known as demosaicing, is not present on the M-Monochrome, so there is even less processing of the picture once it is captured, making it retain most of the details.
Regarding the specifications, the M-Monochrom has a 18 megapixel full-frame CCD sensor that can capture images in sensitivities as high as ISO 10,000. On the back is a 2.5-inch, 230k dot display with sapphire glass cover. The camera supports Leica’s M Mount for lenses. There is no video recording on this camera.
Captured images can be saved in its RAW DNG file format, or you can save them in JPEG. Saving it in JPEG lets you use three color filters for the images from the within the camera: sepia, cold and selenium toning, to really get that old photograph look for your pictures. The camera also comes with full version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro 2 for editing your photos, software that alone costs $350 combined.
As usual, you also get the beautiful classic Leica design. The camera uses a single-piece, full-metal housing made from high-strength magnesium alloy and the top and bottom are made from solid brass blanks. There is soft leather trim on the sides and the M-Monochrom also comes with a carrying strap made from genuine full-grain cowhide leather. It’s the materials and the general attention to detail that sets Leica cameras apart from the plastic cameras that we usually see, which includes high-end DSLRs.
The specific skill set of this camera, coupled with $7,950 price tag means it will find few takers when it goes on sale in late July. Those, however, who do a lot of black and white photography and want no compromises in quality will find this the ideal camera for their needs.
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Microsoft’s Windows Phone Store has steadily been making progress, at least as far as the number of applications are concerned. 2012, in particular, seems to have been a good year, with over 75,000 new applications been added to the store, roughly doubling the overall number.
Back during the launch of Windows Phone 8, Microsoft had said that they had over 120,000 apps on the Windows Phone Store, although no further update was provided on that number this time. What we do know is that customers are now downloading an average of 54 applications to their device, which is over half of what iOS users do.
Microsoft also says that they are seeing an increase in the developer revenue since the launch of Windows Phone 8 by about 40 percent in the past one month.
The Windows Phone Store is now available in 191 markets worldwide.
Source
Foursquare, the location based social networking website has updated its iOS application and the app now comes with the updated Explore, which shows you more recommendations on a single screen and allows you to compare results.
As before, the app shows you relevant information as per your needs and you can see the ratings of places, whether you have friends who have visited them and much more. The update also lets you see the directions and menu items of a place with a single tap.
Foursquare on iOS has a redesigned look once you tap on the Explore section and the app shows you the top suggestion for places in your surroundings, along with new place suggestions from the neighbourhood. The app also shows you the top trending places and offers you to search places by a specific criteria.
You can get all the new features in the latest version of the application from the App Store.
Source | Via
