Everything Apple

Tuesday, 27 February 2018

Rating the big smartphone makers at MWC 2018

 With that in mind, this seems like the perfect opportunity to take a good look at how the industry’s big names fared at the show. Barring any sort of unforeseen circumstances, here’s a list of this week’s biggest winners and losers. HMD (Nokia): HMD scored a coup for a second year in a row, led by another nod to Nokia’s former successes. This time out, it was a return… Read More

Google’s Flutter app SDK for iOS and Android is now in beta

 Flutter is Google’s open source toolkit for helping developers build iOS and Android apps. It’s not necessarily a household name yet, but it’s also less than a year old and, to some degree, it’s going up against frameworks like Facebook’s popular React Native. Google’s framework, which is heavily focused around the company’s Dart programming language,… Read More

Rakuten will roll its $9B loyalty program into a new blockchain-based cryptocurrency, Rakuten Coin

 Back in 2016, Amazon’s Japanese rival Rakuten acquired Bitnet, a bitcoin wallet startup that it had previously invested in, to help it work on blockchain technology and applications. Today, one of the first fruits of that deal has come to light. The company is planning a new cryptocurrency called Rakuten Coin — built on blockchain technology and the company’s existing… Read More

Monday, 26 February 2018

The leaked BlackBerry ‘Ghost’ is reportedly a high-end Android phone built for India

 The clicky-clacky, full keyboard devices that spring to mind when you hear “BlackBerry” might be a thing of the past… but the brand lives on. Famed gadget-unearther Evan Blass dug up a picture of an upcoming BlackBerry device said to be known as “Ghost.” For those finding themselves saying “Wait, they still make BlackBerries?,” the answer is: yeah, sort of. Read More

Fitbit posted a weaker-than-expected quarter and its shares are crashing

 Fitbit, which has increasingly had to fend off competition from devices like the Apple Watch and is increasingly making moves in the healthcare space, still hasn’t seemed to nail things down quite yet as it posted weaker-than-expected financial results for its fourth quarter. The quarter was more or less a complete whiff, falling short of Wall Street estimates for earnings, revenue… Read More

We went for a ride in a Huawei smartphone-controlled self-driving Porsche

 Huawei didn’t have a new phone to show at MWC this year, so it did what any good smartphone maker would: it put the Mate 10 Pro in an autonomous car and drove it directly at a dog. Of course, the promotional video was a lot more dramatic than what the company was actually demoing at the show itself. And while the company insisted to us that the dog in the video was, indeed real and not… Read More

Google makes Actions for its Assistant available to more developers

 Actions on Google, the Google Assistant’s version of what Amazon calls ‘skills,’ have been around for a while, but Google today announced that is expanding the platform to support a wider group of international developers, in addition to a number of other features for the platform. Maybe the most important update here is that Actions are now available in seven new… Read More

Huawei, Asus embrace the smartphone notch

 The notch is here to stay. Two upcoming phones are reported to sport the awful, disgusting notch at the top of the screen. Huawei and Asus are following Apple and Essential down the notch hole. Neither of these phones are confirmed or officially announced yet. Both the Huawei and Asus models appeared online ahead of their official unveiling. They sport, among with what I assume are top-tier… Read More

Geely becomes Daimler’s largest shareholder with $9 billion stake

 Automaker Daimler has a new largest shareholder – Geely Automotive chairman Li Shufu. The Geely stake, worth an estimated $9 billion, should give the Chinese automotive giant more leverage when trying to work out cross-company tech arrangements with Daimler and its sub brands including Mercedes-Benz. Daimler is already partnered up with a major automotive concern in China… Read More

Apple could be working on AirPods-like over-the-ear headphones

 According to KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Apple Insider, Apple could be working on a brand new pair of wireless headphones for later this year. While the company already owns Beats, those over-the-ear headphones could be sold under the Apple brand. It seems like the AirPods are a success, and the company wants to capitalize on this market. The new headphones would feature the same convenience… Read More

5G needs a “new mindset” towards Internet rules, telcos warn

 Carriers have kicked off the world’s biggest mobile phone tradeshow with calls for an “investment friendly framework” to fund rollouts of next-gen 5G network technology and level the playing field with Internet giants. “We need a new mindset,” argued Telefonica CEO José María Álvarez-Pallete López, giving the first keynote of the morning here at Mobile… Read More

Pop-up cameras could soon be a mobile trend

 There’s an interesting concept making its way around Mobile World Congress. Two gadgets offer cameras hidden until activated, which offer a fresh take on design and additional privacy. Vivo built a camera into a smartphone concept that’s on a little sliding tray and Huawei will soon offer a MacBook Pro clone that features a camera hidden under a door above the keyboard. This could… Read More