News tagged ‘Droid’

As you probably know, Microsoft is working on its own smartwatch. This wearable device, however, will differ greatly from the rivals' products. According to a well-known Windows blogger Paul Thurrott, Microsoft's smartwatch is actually a cross-platform fitness band.

What this means is that the small gadget will be compatible not only with Windows Phone, but also with Android and iOS. Moreover, just like Apple's iWatch, it will feature a number of health and fitness-related sensors.

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According to the latest reports from people familiar with the matter, Apple's handsets remain the top-selling smartphones on European market. Despite the fact that Samsung's Galaxy S5 was released after the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, it still only on the third place. However, the South Korean device seems to be gaining popularity.

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German carmaker Audi has recently announced that beginning from 2015, its vehicles will support Apple’s CarPlay system. What is interesting, though, is that aside from CarPlay, Audi plans to add the support of Google’s Android Auto system to its new cars. Sources at German company claim that the users will even get the opportunity to switch between the rival platforms "at any time."

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Google is expected to announce a HealthKit competitor soon. According to the latest reports from people familiar with the matter, the release of Google's fitness tracking application will take place at the annual conference for developers called Google I/O, which is set to be held later this month in San Francisco.

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A concept designer named Jay Machalani has recently created an iOS 8 concept, which allows you to expand icons into special widget blocks. These blocks look pretty similar to Android's Widgets and Microsoft's Live Tiles.

You may take a look at the video showing iOS concept below.

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Apple's iPhone is a very popular smartphone. In fact, it is so much popular that nearly half of the smartphone users own one.

According to the latest report from research firm Chitika Insights, iOS users generate 53.1% of North American web traffic. Android users come in the second place with 44.5%.

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According to what Morgan Stanley’s analyst Katy Huberty says, Apple's iPad sales won't grow this quarter. The reasons for such poor results are the absence of new products and the price, which is, compared to Android tablets, pretty high.

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Many users think of buying new modern wireless headphones to replace original old-type ones that came with a player or a smartphone. Today we will show you Hitz WP-380 headphones from Creative.

First impression always starts from the process of unpackaging the box. Hitz WP-380 looks great, at first sight one can tell that these headphones are very well made. The design is modern. These on ear type headphones have professionally-tuned 34mm neodymium drivers that must deliver excellent sound. There is also a microphone, so Hitz WP-380 can be used to make calls as well. Official web page positions Hitz WP-380 as a Lightweight On-ear Bluetooth Headset with NFC.

The box has the headset, small travel pouch, mini-USB cable for charging, standart 3.5mm audio cable and user manual.

The design is simple and modern. The quality is very good, just as you'd expect from device made by Creative. The headset sits comfortable and can be adjusted in several ways. The cups do fold, which is good. We find these headphones fairly comfortable and experienced no problems wearing them for a long time. WP-380 weights just 5.3 oz (150 g).

The microphone is hidden in the earcup, it's a little far from the mouth, it is  it is hard to use the WP-380 headset in a noisy place.

It is very easy to start listen to the music: you need is to turn on WP-380 and keep holding on/off button. The light goes blinking blue, which means it is ready to connect to some gadget. On the iPhone just navigate to Settings - Bluetooth, then find and select Creative WP-380 in the list of found devices. That's it. Easy! The working distance is approximately 33 ft (10 meters), which is enough to walk around the house with no need to carry your player or smartphone with you.

WP-380 can also connect to devices with NFC technology (Near Field Communication). Unfortunately Apple smartphones do not support NFC, while Android users will be happy to try NFC.

Another interesting fact about WP-380 is Creative ShareMe and Creative Multipoint. Creative ShareMe (one source, two headsets) allows you to share your music wirelessly with your buddy or loved one using another Creative ShareMe-enabled wireless headset. Creative Multipoint (two sources, one headset) allows you to pair two separate devices to the headset at the same time. This means that you can easily switch your music source between these two Bluetooth stereo devices.

There are several buttons to control the headset. The on/off button is used to turn headset on and off, to set up BlueTooth connection, and to answer the incoming call. Using next, previous, play/pause (combined with on/off button) is is possible to control the music, stop/play, skip to the next track or play the previous one. Volume buttons are used to control the volume. Unfortunately it is not possible to use Siri voice assistant on the iPhone, there is just no button for that.

The quality of the sound is very good. This is not a surprise, since Creative uses different software and hardware trick s to improve sound playback and recording quality. Middle and high frequencies are well done, bass is good as well. The built-in speech microphone with ClearSpeech Engine actively suppresses external noises and digitally enhances speech clarity so that your conversations are loud and clear.

By the way, users of iPad tablet and iPod Touch player can use this headset to talk via Skype and similar voip apps.

The compatible list of devices is quite high. Hitz WP-380 works with Bluetooth enabled devices as well as with with every phone and player that has a standart 3.5mm jack.

Creative WP-380 charges in about an hour. Internal battery gives us approximately 12 hours of playback time.

Technical Specifcations:

iPhoneRoot thanks Creative and Powersales International for providing Creative WP-380 review sample.

Apple wants major game developers to release their new games exclusively for iOS. This will allow to lure many customers from the competitive platform - Android. The problem is that Google also plans to get the so-called first rights for many games.

Both tech giants promise to promote new games and their developers placing them to all kinds of ratings and lists. Now it’s up to developers to decide what company - Apple or Google - to choose.

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Apple has become the company that made the whole mobile industry move to 64-bit processors, TSMC co-CEO Mark Liu thinks. iPhone 5s, which was released last fall, became the first handset on market equipped with an entirely new and incredibly efficient CPU.

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According to the latest patent filings published on Thursday by the US Patent and Trademark Office, Apple is planning to develop a new device-unlocking system. This system will allow users to unlock their iOS devices by connecting a set of illuminated dots, so that drawing a custom pattern on the screen of the device. The patent applications are entitled 'Gesture entry techniques'. There're two filings that deal with the new technology, not one, which a bit strange, I guess.

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Apple is reportedly working on a new song identification system for iOS 8. The company plans to cooperate with Shazam in order to add a new feature to its native music player, Bloomberg reports. Why do we need such a feature in iOS? To be honest, I don't  know.

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According to the latest rumors, the company from Cupertino is planning to change the iTunes music store dramatically. The reason for such overhaul is quite simple and obvious: the number of music downloads declines from quarter to quarter and Apple’s iTunes Radio is not as successful as it was expected to be.

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The company from Cupertino remains U.S. top smartphone manufacturer with Samsung and LG coming in the second and the third place respectively. Moreover, Apple’s market share continues to grow, comScore reports. However, Google’s Android is still the top smartphone platform as nearly 52% of devices on market have Android on board.

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It’s Sunday again, so I’ve decided to take a brief look at the most interesting posts of the last week. Let’s not waste time on senseless introductions and talk about recent Apple news right now.

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