Mobile Computing News

Photo: Samsung

So you thought we were joking when we said that Samsung were hell bent on becoming Apple’s number one competitor in the mobile computing space. Did you think it hyperbole when many of us considered the Samsung Galaxy S as one of the top three phones available in the world today, and wondered out loud what they could come up with next? Well, if a leaked Samsung slide of what could be the company’s next phone is anything to go by, come next February, you may start agreeing with us. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: 1080p, google android, mobile OS, Samsung Galaxy S

Photo: Zawezome / Flickr

For the better part of two decades, cellular carriers have been fleecing customers with obscenely high voice and text message charges. While a few pence may not ‘seem’ like too much of a cost, when you realise that a message is effectively a few bytes, you find you’re effectively paying north of £500 per mb of data used for SMS messages. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: Android apps, BBM, iPhone, SMS messages

Photo: richardmasoner / Flickr

Kindle, currently the most successful consumer product in the electronic reader market, is sky rocketing in sales. Amazon.com recently announced that it will pay 70 per cent of the retail cost of books or magazines to publishers for every title that is sold at the kindle store. This 70 per cent excludes delivery costs but still will produce a massive net profit for publishers. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: Amazon Kindle, eBooks, tablet pc

Photo: RafeB / Flickr

Nokia recently announced it was taking development control of Symbian back, while leaving the Symbian foundation to do licensing. Some have hailed this as a good move on Nokia’s part and the final roll of the dice for the company if it intends on rescuing the ailing OS. We, on the other hand, think it’s a silly move on the part of a company reluctant to swallow the sunk cost and to move onto better things. At the very least, Nokia could rename it. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: mobile OS, Nokia N8, symbian, Symbian^3, webOS

Photo: Microsoft

The smartphone app marketplace is the be-all and end-all – with the same applying for tablets and their marketplace. There is absolutely no denying the fact that even if you have the best handset in the world, with the best mobile OS platform in the world, your smartphone will fail in the market if it is not embraced by developers and does not have sensational apps built for it. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: android, ipad, mobile OS, Web OS, Windows Phone 7

Photo: Apple

Gartner, the famous research company, has predicted that 2011 will be a blow out year for tablets, with worldwide device shipments likely to top 54.8 million units. Even with that high volume, Gartner expects Apple’s iPad tablet PC to dominate sales, swallowing a huge portion of market share, and solidifying its position as the pre-eminent tablet. Other people believe Apple could sell 48 million iPads next year alone. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: Apple iPad, Gartner, Samsung Galaxy Tab, tablet pc

Photo: nate steiner / Flickr

It’s been some time since we covered the highly controversial Digital Economy Act. That’s mostly because it seemed like a done deal, and was the current ConDem’s administration’s first signs that all the promise of change it brought with it were likely to be muted at best. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: Digital Economy Act, ISP

Photo: Android

Last year this time, Gartner predicted that the growth of Google Android would put that mobile OS platform in second place overall come 2012. Gartner was wrong by two calendar years. Android is the second most common smartphone platform in the world already, behind only Nokia’s fast ailing Symbian mobile OS. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: android, symbian

Photo: Rob Blatt / Flickr

In the technocentric age we now live in, the media infiltrates everyone’s life on a daily basis at pretty much every turn we take. We are overwhelmed with screens, messages, pictures, audio and videos which seep their way into our conscious and subconscious minds. Along with all these technological advancements has come the fascination with computer and console gaming. Today, video games are a massive consumer market. Gaming has become a culture and way of life for many. Though there are many benefits to living in a world where access to information is so free, a lot of damage may also be caused through the media and gaming in particular. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: console gaming, PC Gaming

Photo: Garmin

Even with the current doomsaying about the GPS industry, there is certainly life left in it still. The recently reviewed TomTom Go 1000 Live confirmed this, and while the Garmin Nuvi 1490t is not a like for like comparison, this 5-inch GPS device is another example of what makes the stand-alone satnav device still attractive in a post-GPS smartphone world. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: GPS, smartphone GPS, touchscreen

Photo: Martin Olsson / Wikimedia Commons

Microsoft CEO and everybody’s ‘bad guy’ when the venerable company is questioned about why it isn’t a force online has just sold a big stake of his shares in the company. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: microsoft, Microsoft Kinect, Office for Mac 2011, Steve Ballmer, Windows Phone 7

Photo: THQInsider / Flickr

We have undying love for all of Valve’s games, as well as everything the company stands for. While the games no doubt speak for themselves, it’s the attitude the company has to video game development and gamers that makes us love the company. And in response to a recent post on gaming industry website Gamasutra, the company showed it had an understanding of gamers shared by too few. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: MMO, multiplayer games, Portal 2, videogames

Photo: Yutaka Tsutano / Flickr

You would be hard-pressed to find any male under the age of 40 who did not, at some point, wish to be a Jedi, or an X-Wing pilot, or a TIE fighter. Playing the occasional make-believe Star Wars game is just what we did growing up. And now the iPhone’s true purpose has been revealed with the impending release of the augmented reality Star Wars: Falcon Attack. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: augmented reality, iPhone, iphone 4

Photo: Ed Yourdon / Flickr

Writing about tech we have the fortune of getting to try out a number of different devices in the name of the job. The ‘Call of Duty’, if you will, requires we try most big deal devices out as they come out, with a particular focus on ‘computing devices’. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: Laptops, netbooks, smartphones

Photo: Dell

RIM suffered a massive blow as one of the world’s biggest computer manufacturers, Dell, has just shifted 25,000 of its employees off BlackBerry phones over to Dell handsets sporting the new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS platform. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: blackberry, dell

Photo: Games Thirst

In a world where people complain video games are dumbed down as social gaming companies like Zynga rise to the top of the food chain, it’s good to see traditional, complex games doing so incredibly well at retail. It’s especially so when the franchise is historically a PC-only one, with many of its gameplay traits borrowed heavily from the platform. Fallout: New Vegas is one such title, with publisher Zenimax announcing its more than half way to 10 million units shipped. (Read more…)

Tags for this article: RPG, video games