Chinese officials start seizing iPads from retailers after Apple loses lawsuit
Chinese officials started confiscating iPad slates from retailers, following the defeat in the naming rights lawsuit for the Cupertino-based company. Many retailers have had their stores visited by employees of Administrations of Industry and Commerce and their in-stock iPads taken away.
The campaign comes despite the appeal lawsuit that is still going in the Chinese court. There’s no saying when it will be over, but Apple will obviously have trouble selling its tablet in the world’s most populous country until then.
Meanwhile Proview, the company that won the iPad trademark rights, demanded an official apology and a compensation of $38 million from Apple.
It was always certain that Apple will pay whatever needs to be paid to get itself out of trouble. However, given this most recent turn of event, Apple may be forced to act before the court case is over, as suspension of sales might be more damaging to its financial results than a few millions in compensation.
LG announces world's first FullHD smartphone display with a pixel density of 440ppi
LG has created a new display for the ever evolving smartphone that involves packing in 1920 x 1080 pixels in just 5-inches of display space. This is the world’s first FullHD smartphone display and has a pixel density of an astonishing 440ppi, way ahead of what we currently have in our phones.
The panel used in the display is an Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching or AH-IPS LCD. This is the same technology that LG used in one of its panels last year for which they also won an award. Compared to standard IPS panels, AH-IPS panels have greater color accuracy, wider viewing angles and greater light transmission which leads to lower power consumption.
This 5-inch FullHD panel will be released in the second half of this year and should hopefully be the norm in next year’s high-end smartphones.
The FCC database revealed a number of elements pertaining to a new member of Sony’s VAIO laptop family this week in the form of the VCC111.
It would seem that manufactures are still happy to follow through on support for Google’s web connected OS and Sony are shaping up to provide the next Chromebook in the lineup.
The VCC111 can be seen in fairly comprehensive detail, dispelling any confusions over this laptop as an ultrabook, rather than a Chromebook, which was one initial speculation. The 111 is a well connected device, with two USB ports alongside an SD card reader, an HDMI port on the opposing side and what looks like a removable battery.
Right side, left side and front views of the VCC111.
Based on the various files referenced on the FCC’s site, a specs list has been pieced together, but there are still uncertainties over some of the hardware under the VCC111′s hood.
For starters it utilizes an 11.6″ Samsung-made display. Internals are rumored to include an Nvidia Tegra 250 T25 1.2GHz ARM based CPU, backed up by 2GB of RAM and internal storage in the form of an SSD with a 16GB capacity. There’s also the essential inclusion of WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and of course Bluetooth.
Going by the patterns seen on previous Chromebooks, the VCC111 should cost in the vicinity of $299-$400 and going by its appearance on the FCC database we could see it arrive on the market in a matter of weeks.
Does Sony stepping into the Chromebook ring change the stakes? With an established sub-brand like VAIO in the Chrome OS-running family, will there be greater potential for adoption by new users with existing Sony loyalties? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Samsung opened its first Samsung Mobile Store in Paris, France on December 1. It’s dedicated to mobile devices only and offers a similar experience and support as the Apple’s Retail Stores.
The store spreads to 170 square meters and you can find and try every one of the latest Samsung’s smartphones, players, slates, portable cameras and notebooks.
The Mobile Store is probably also the one place where you can find all original accessories for Samsung’s latest gadgets.
Samsung Mobile Store also doubles as a showroom for Samsung’s distribution partners as well as a place where children can learn and play with the new technologies.
Just to avoid the confusion, Samsung already has its own stores around the world, but this is the first one exclusively dedicated to the mobile technologies. So you won’t find TVs, PCs and other non-mobile Samsung devices.
If you like reading on your phone then you may have used or heard of Read it Later. One of the most popular reading apps around, Read it Later allowed you to mark sites on your desktop browser for reading later and then when you go to the mobile app you would find them there properly formatted for the display of your smartphone.
Read it Later has now gone through a major redesign and is now called Pocket. The developers have changed almost every visible aspect of the application, and it looks almost nothing like the old one. It is also completely free, unlike Read it Later, which was sold in free and paid versions.
Right off the bat you’ll notice that Pocket is a gorgeous app and is miles ahead of the app that it replaces in terms of design alone. The new UI shows you the list of articles along with a thumbnail image on the right. On the top you can choose which category to display. Unlike Read it Later, Pocket supports images and videos along with articles. You can tag the items in the list, mark them as favorite or archive them for offline viewing.
Open the article and you will find the new article view with the tool bar at the bottom. With just one tap you can make the app go full screen. The toolbar lets you adjust the font size, switch between serif and sans-serif fonts, text justification and an inverse night mode. You can also adjust the display brightness independent of the main settings.
Pocket is a multiplatform app, which means along with iPhone and iPad it is also available on Android (no Windows Phone version, yet). The Android version too looks beautiful and it is optimized for Ice Cream Sandwich but the biggest problem with this version is the scrolling, which is terribly sluggish, even on powerful phones such as HTC One X. The original Read it Later app was a lot smoother in comparison. There is also a version for the Kindle Fire, although we could not try it out.
Pocket is free for download and has all the features and more from the premium version of Read it Later, which would be great news for those who were using the free version but not so much for those who recently purchased it. There are a couple of niggles with it, such as the lack of choices for fonts and the poor scrolling on the Android version but otherwise it is a fantastic app for those who like to read even when they are away from their computers.
Download for iOS • Download for Android • Download for Kindle Fire
You may have heard about the game Tiny Wings by now. It was released in February last year and so far has only been available on the iPhone and iPod touch.
A few days ago, developer Andreas Illiger released the v2.0 of Tiny Wings that introduces some new gameplay mechanics, along with an iPad version. Let’s take a look at it.
Just in case you don’t know about this game, here is a quick recap. Tiny Wings involves controlling a bird with small wings that cannot fly on its own. Instead, it uses the terrain to its advantage and slides down slopes to cover ground. As a player, you have just one thing to do: tap the screen, which causes the bird to slide down the slope faster, which in turn causes it to jump higher when the terrain slopes upwards.
You have to time your taps properly so that you attain maximum speed while going up the slope and thus cover the most distance. You have a limited amount of time on your hand and the more ground you cover in that time, the higher your score.
Tiny Wings makes use of procedural graphics, that is, graphics that are generated on the fly. This means that the terrain never looks the same no matter how many times you play the game.
v1.0 of the game had just one level that involved covering as much distance as possible and performing certain challenges, such as staying in the air for a certain amount of time or covering a certain amount of distance.
v2.0, however, brings a new game mode called ‘Flight School’ that adds four more birds. In Flight School, you can choose from any of the four birds (they have the same abilities; only their color and the sound they make are unique). The current version of Tiny Wings has three islands and each island has five levels. Once you choose a bird, you will be competing against the other birds to reach the destination first. If you are in the top three, you progress onto the next level, or you try the level again.
The gameplay is basically the same as in the main ‘Day Trip’ game mode, although the environments have been slightly changed. There are no coins to collect here and the blue boost points have been replaced with sunflowers, which will boost you if you land directly on them. Certain depressions in the terrain now also contain water and if you land in it you lose your speed and you can’t jump out.
The new game mode is fun and it gives you something to compete against, even in single-player mode. I also noticed that although it’s easy to come in at second or third, the first position is substantially more difficult to attain, which keeps things from being too easy.
Since there are only three islands for now (with more coming soon) and with fifteen levels between them, it’s not too time consuming to finish them all in once sitting. After completing each island your bird gets an upgraded nest. Once you fully upgrade the nest of one bird, you can choose another and play the levels again, if you so wish.
Another major thing that this update brings is an iPad version. The iPad version is a separate download and supports the Retina display on your new iPad. This version also comes with a split screen multi-player mode, where the screen is vertically divided in two parts so that two people can play and compete in a single game simultaneously.
Now, if you have played this game before, you know that it can be very addictive. Tiny Wings falls in the category of games that includes the likes of Canabalt or Temple Run, where the gameplay is ridiculously simple and repetitive, yet you keep on playing it again and again in the hopes of doing better next time just because it’s so much fun. Tiny Wings also complements the fun gameplay with beautiful hand-drawn visuals that look especially stunning on the Retina display and lovely, soothing music that stays with you long after you stop playing the game.
Overall, Tiny Wings is simple, fun and beautiful. It can be enjoyed by anyone, anytime and does not cost a lot. v2.0 isn’t a substantially major leap forward but then again, the game was already very good so even small improvements can go a long way. A must buy, if you haven’t already done so by now. Too bad it’s only available on iOS right now. Hopefully, the developer will release it on other platforms soon.
Rating: 4.5/5 Pros: Simple yet addictive gameplay, beautiful visuals and sound Cons: Not a universal app (iPad version is separate and slightly expensive)
Developer: Andreas Illiger Content Rating: 4+ Size: 15.7/22.3MB Price: $0.99/$2.99
Samsung Galaxy S II stars in second ad, no hands required [VIDEO]
The second Samsung Galaxy S II ad is out and it takes us far north where an Eskimo faces a challenge – send an SMS with gloves on. Taking the gloves off isn’t recommended, even predictive text input can’t make sense of text typed with freezing, shaking hands.
So, how does the Galaxy S II help the Eskimo? Well… Using Google’s Voice Actions is the answer. Of course Voice Actions will work on any Froyo droid, so I’m a bit confused as to what Samsung is advertising here.
Anyway, here’s the video:
Better than showing the Samsung Galaxy S II working under water with a disclaimer that it can’t actually do that. Really, I don’t get the value of either of those ads.
