Google has announced that it is rolling out Android 4.4 update to Google Glass along with other improvements. The company is launching the update soon after last week’s announcement which will allow the US buyers to shop the Google Glass for a limited period of time on April 15th.
Continue reading “Google Glass to get Android 4.4 KitKat update with several new features”
Vine, the popular video sharing service, has updated its service today, to include direct messaging. The updated service is now being rolled out to iOS and Android devices with an app update on their respective stores. Since launch, Vine has grown into a massive community of video makers, using it mainly for its performance art potential. In the mean time, the community itself started getting personal, with couples vining each other, and viners forming couples, so there obviously was a bit more space for personal communication for Vine as a service, as video messaging has been a long time riddle. We also think that Vine would be happy to know that the service has matured to become part of a particular set of people’s lives, an indication of growth and popularity.
Continue reading “Vine introduces Direct messaging with updates to its iOS and Android apps”
Truecaller, a really popular phone book/caller ID application, is hugely popular in India. Taking advantage of the user base here, the company has announced a partnership with Twitter for an unique integration into its app. Users can now tweet or follow their contacts, or any number associated with a Twitter account, right from inside the Truecaller app. This unique integration is even more special, as it starts its roll out for Android users, first in India. In a bid to increase engagement, Twitter seems to have handed over its private APIs for accessing stored mobile numbers to Truecaller, as a part of this partnership, so that they can use it for this integration, again, starting with India. This is a genius move for courting the vast number of Truecaller users to Twitter, which is already gaining huge popularity in the country with sports, politics and Bollywood topics being the rage. The update also brings a clean new design and is immediately available for Android, with the iOS version slated for a 2014 release, with no solid dates for other platforms.
Smartphone photography is the next big thing and Google is taking note of all the troubles faced by Nexus 5 users. In an update aimed at squashing all those bugs, Google has started rolling out the Android 4.4.1 update for Nexus 5 users. David Burke, Director of Engineering for Android at Google, says that the update can be classified in five categories. Autofocus related fixes form the first part of that. Burke says that the team has sped up the read time for surrounding imagery to gauge the surroundings and to set up the image capture algorithms accordingly. Hence the autofocus mechanism will trigger quicker, the images will be captured faster. There have also been improvements on the exposure and white balance front. Continue reading “Android 4.4.1 update fixes Nexus 5 camera woes”
As if Moto G wasn’t enough of an indication that Google and its subsidiary Motorola are working closely, today the company announced that its Flagship product – Moto X will be getting an update to Android 4.4 KitKat. This is only for Verizon Wireless customers who have bought the Moto X, but it still is way ahead of the KitKat OTA update that has been evading the Nexus devices so far. The Moto X is a neat little device that runs on stock Android, with a couple of hardware related enhancements like the always listening Google Now and the fact that it is now getting all the Android 4.4 KitKat goodness is a nice gesture from Google/Motorola.
Continue reading “Moto X gets Android 4.4 KitKat on Verizon before Nexus 4 OTA”
A few days back, Pebble, the Kickstarter success story that makes E-ink smartwatches, revealed their new 2.0 SDK with which developers could take advantage of the new capabilities and hooks in the software. It was also announced that there will be a new update to the Pebble Smartwatch app for devices running iOS 7, which will take advantage of the notification center Bluetooth APIs that Apple introduced with the new update. Well, that Smartwatch app update Pebble promised, which carries the version number – 1.3.0, is now live on the iTunes app store.
HTC has been trying their best to turn the ship around and having a consumer centric approach. From the beautifully designed HTC One to the Google Play Edition and now, fast OS updates, the company has been doing a lot of things right. Jason Mackenzie, president of HTC America, has just confirmed that the Google Play Edition of the flagship handset will be running Android 4.4 within 15 days. He also reaffirmed that the Developer Edition and unlock version will be on the new release within 30 days. Continue reading “HTC One to get Android 4.4 KitKat within 90 days”
Google and LG have just unleashed a wave of announcements at us, and one of them is hardware – the Google Nexus 5. If you are curious about the other one, it’s none other than the software – Android 4.4 KitKat that comes preinstalled on the Nexus 5. The premier Android experience has received an update and will eventually roll out to Nexus 4 and other Google Play devices first, with OEM devices taking their own sweet time to implement them, as expected. Unlike Android 4.3, we have a lot of new features, user facing ones as well as under the hood features that will matter to you, a lot. Since there are too many to wrap your head, we shall be doing the service of compiling the most useful and obvious changes in Android 4.4 for you. So, what’s new in Android 4.4 KitKat?
Viber is a well known app, popular mainly for its VOIP services and chat. The company has been having its own Windows Phone 8 app for a while but it lacked some much needed features. With the announcement of the new desktop app, the integration was curiously missing out on the Windows Phone platform with the 3.0 update, but finally, the app has been now updated with a nicely refreshed UI with custom backgrounds support and better integration with Viber desktop that lets you take calls and transfer them over to phone from the PC or vice versa. You can download the update from the Windows Phone Store here.
Continue reading “Viber for Windows Phone 8 updated with redesigned UI and Viber desktop support”
The long awaited Windows Phone GDR3 update has now been officially unveiled and confirms most of the rumors around the update. The biggest and most promising feature is that Windows Phone now supports 1080p displays and the Snapdragon 800 SoC. This means that Windows Phone flagships will no longer be crippled by hardware limits when compared to Android phones. It can be said that WP phones are usually fast enough to not require top of the line hardware but chipsets like the Snapdragon 800 also bring a lot more to the table. Support for 1080p displays means that you can now have up to 6 small tiles or an additional medium sized tile. Alongside 1080p screens, Windows Phone can now also be used on 5-6 inch display devices allowing Windows Phone phablets, something we’ll be seeing very soon in the form of the Lumia 1520.
It’s been a while since the official Twitter for Windows Phone app got its updates. It had unsurprisingly missed the conversation thread update iOS and Android received. While that feature has still evaded the platform, we have news of an update for the app. The app now arguably brings more choices and interesting changes to the Twitter experience on your Windows Phone. Most notable of the new additions are the new dark theme option and lock screen highlights. Users can now choose between a light and dark theme and have Twitter set as the lock screen picture(using Windows Phone 8’s unique feature) to show recent highlights from your feed.
Oppo launched its all new camera centric flagship – the N1 a while back and also announced that the International version of the N1 will come with the Color ROM pre-installed. We know you’re wondering what the Color ROM is all about, and this is precisely the reason we are going to show you an overview of it on the Oppo Find 5. In short, it is more beautiful, more functional than the original firmwares Oppo shipped its phones with, and is possibly the best looking Android UI out there. So, dive into our video to see what it’s all about, and go past the break for a visual walkthrough –
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD8NeDfVyUQ
The HTC One might have launched way back in February but it still remains the flagship phone for the company, and with it being a flagship comes the responsibility of fast updates. We have seen the Android 4.2.2 update roll out first in Taiwan, in the month of July, and now we are seeing the latest Android 4.3 update roll out for the HTC One again, in Taiwan, starting today. Android 4.3 is still the latest version of the vastly popular operating system and considering that even the Nexus devices run on this version, HTC and other OEMs have made good time on the updates.
Continue reading “HTC One Android 4.3 OTA Update starts rolling out in Taiwan”
There was huge uproar after Google announced its plans to drop EAS support for all non-corporate GMail accounts, mainly because that affected Windows Phone, which has no in-built support for the new CardDAV and CalDAV technologies. Hence Microsoft and Google decided to extend the support for Windows Phone devices until July 31st, yesterday, a date from which devices without the GDR2 update would have stopped supporting syncing to Google servers. Thankfully, the companies have extended the date yet again, to December 31st, since most devices haven’t got the update yet.
The Oppo Find 5 is one of the very few phones in the world to receive updates driven by the community. If you had read our review, you might have have noticed us mentioning the overwhelming community support the device gets. Yes, there is a robust feedback system that the company employs thanks to the limited availability and a responsive fan base. Considering the feedback, they released an OTA update earlier, with bug fixes mostly dominating the changelog, and similarly there is another update available now, but this time they have added quite a lot of feature, read past the break to find the changelog.
Continue reading “Oppo Find 5 receives an OTA update, new features and bug fixes aplenty”
