Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.
If we’re to find a common thread in this week’s collection of stories, it’d be nature’s guiding hand. How it inspires science, how we seek to imitate it, and how unnatural the future of policing could be. This is alt-week,
Viewing it from afar, you could easily mistake this gadget for Jawbone’s Up fitness band. What we have here is actually the SmartBand from Chinese fitness accessories maker Codoon, and it’s almost a carbon copy of the Up in terms appearance and functionality. Bend this strip around your wrist to track your movement and sleeping patterns (with the ability to wake you up with vibration at the optimal sleeping cycle; just like the Up), and afterwards, plug the hidden 3.5mm headphone jack into either an iPhone or an Android device for analysis and sharing through Codoon’s website.
After we reached out to Baidu regarding the Baidu Cloud logo on the SmartBand, a spokesperson told us that it’s the first wearable developed on top of Baidu’s PCS (Personal Cloud Service) to sync and share data, and Codoon’s upcoming Bluetooth fitness products will work on the same platform (the same goes with the Baidu Eye project). Still, it’s a real shame that the startup couldn’t come up with its very own design for its first hero product. Expect this rip-off to hit the market in early June for an unknown price — but you can already get an Up in China, anyway.
Filed under: Wearables
Via: Engadget China, TechCrunch, Tencent Tech
Source: Codoon (Chinese)
We can all stipulate that holding up your phone at a wedding like that is kind of a douche move, right? Could be worse, though — they could all be carrying annoying safety day-glo nuclear green phones or something.
And you gotta love the "Do not attempt" fine print.
Meanwhile, Android activated another thousand devices in the time it took you to watch that commercial.
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The internet is often renowned for its amazing bargains, but in the uncharted waters of cyberspace the best deals are usually too good to be true. This isn’t one of those times. Recently, a bogus coupon for 90 percent off at Razer’s UK store went viral, which resulted in a frenzy of online purchases. While internet scams are all too common, the company’s response to this matter is somewhat shocking. Instead of canceling the shady orders, Razer has decided to honor them, but with some limitations. The company will uphold the discount on individual purchases for different products, but void repeat transactions on the same item. Due to some back-ordered items, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan warned that it’ll take a few months to fulfill all the orders, and professed that his outfit would incur “an insane amount of losses” in doing so. Good form, Mr. Tan, but we can’t help but cringe when trying to fathom how many of these were sold for around £11.
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals
Source: Min-Liang Tan (Facebook)
With a couple of days to go until Facebook officially unveils its “new home for Android,” we continue to see a variety of reports detailing the social network’s new mobile initiative, with the latest one including what looks like the first render of HTC’s upcoming Facebook phone.
Dubbed as the “HTC first,” the device above may be showing us the real deal, but it may just as well be a fake meant to attract some attention before the big day. However, it’s worth pointing out that the image comes that the often-reliable @evleaks Twitter account that provided countless pictures of upcoming mobile devices in the past, ahead of their actual announcement.
The HTC first is known by another name from previous rumors, HTC Myst, and it’s reportedly going to be a 4.3-inch device that will feature a 720p display, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 4G LTE (support for AT&T bands,) 5-megapixel camera, 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera, Bluetooth 4.0, Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and Sense UI 4.5 on top which will include the new Facebook Home.
Earlier today we showed you a report that detailed how the Facebook Home environment would look and feel like on top of Android, although a full demo of Facebook Home is not available at this time. We’ll have to wait for the special event on Thursday for Zuckerberg and Co. to fully showcase the Facebook-based user interface that could transform your phone’s Android experience in the future.
As for the image above, it’s too early to tell you if it’s real or not. The HTC first does look like an iPhone, just like previous reports said it would, complete with what seems to be a circular button flanked by two other capacitive buttons. It also has the on/off button on the top right side, while the volume controls are placed on the left side.
Like always with such renders, hang on to that grain of salt as we wait for official press images of the device.
Would you be interested in such an Android smartphone?
The post Facebook Home ‘HTC first’ phone render hits the web; real or fake? appeared first on Android Authority.
The first of April is pretty amazing. Sometimes you get awesome, over-the-top jokes… and sometimes you get some very sublime, subversive ones. This ‘roadmap’ from BlackBerry is the latter of those two.
A fun little joke, and one that suggests BlackBerry has a few devices lined up into 2014. Essentially, it shows a BlackBerry tablet coming out late this year, and a reloaded handset offering next year. If you take it at face value, BlackBerry has tipped their product timetable hat to the world.
BlackBerry enthusiasts were a little giddy at this, and even various other media outlets had been duped. It’s that kind of day, though. Everyone gets fooled at one point or another!
How did we know it wasn’t real? Manufacturers are usually very tight-lipped about future product launches, as it gives the competition time to adjust. There is also the crude graphics and design of the image, which smacks more of a local charity bake-sale than a tech company product timetable. Also, look at that U10 device. Is it a larger phone? Smaller tablet? If it were real, and that graph was any indication of scale… no thanks.
More importantly, it fails to show BlackBerry’s demise, bankruptcy, and eventual firesale… but that could be 2015. Oh, come on! We’re kidding! Hopefully.
The post Leaked BlackBerry roadmap is fake appeared first on Android Authority.
If you’re going to engage in KIRF-ology, you could certainly do worse than HTC’s lovely 5-inch slab of unibody plastic, the Butterfly. But if you want to sell it for $ 222.00, certain niceties have to go out the window — like the signature 1080P screen, for instance. Star’s slipped a 720P unit in there instead, while also downgrading the RAM to 1GB and swapping out Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz quad-core CPU for a cheaper MediaTek model. The Chinese cloner’s at least kept the other specs real, matching the kosher model’s 8-megapixel rear and 3-megapixel front cameras, dual-sim option, SD card expansion slot and Android 4.2 software. Of course, nothing keeps costs down like not having to pay a designer — and knowing that most of that pesky marketing’s already been done for you.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Via: GizChina.com
Source: UreDeal
After seeing a Google X Phone rumor earlier today, we’re now back with a first render of the handset, which was leaked alongside certain hardware details.
GSM Arena has received the image above from a tipster, and from the get-go we’ll tell you that it looks totally fake. Unless someone wanted us to question the lack of a speaker needed for actual calls or the fact that the time is off by a couple of minutes (check out the first circle and then the status bar,) this looks like a bad photoshopped image so far.
Considering that the picture doesn’t inspire any trust, should we believe the associated hardware details? Unfortunately we can’t answer that question yet, as we have nothing official from Google.
The tipster says that the handset will sport a 4.7-inch display with 1280 x 768 resolution, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 4000mAh battery, no microSD support and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean “with very few customizations job [sic] by Motorola.” The handset is also said to come with IP57 certification (water resistant up to a meter for up to 30 minutes) and Gorilla Glass 3 display.
Comparatively, the earlier X Phone rumor said that the handset will come with a 4.8-inch display of unspecified resolution, sapphire protection instead of Gorilla Glass, a 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU and 4000mAh battery. The other rumor also said the phone will come with a carbon fiber black plate and rubber bumper corners.
There are similarities and differences between these two rumors, although that doesn’t really mean a thing since we’re used to see lots of rumors hit the web before a new product launches, with some of them contradicting the others.
Now that we’ve seen the first X Phone render, which can easily be proven fake, we’ll get back to waiting for actual images of the device to leak. We’ll also remind you that an earlier rumor claimed that an early X Phone prototype has already been leaked and previewed, that unnamed Motorola handset found in Vietnam just before the Galaxy S4 announcement.
What do you expect from the X Phone?
The post Google X Phone render leaks, looks totally fake appeared first on Android Authority.
Earlier today a set of leaked Google Babble screenshots has hit the web, but a trusted source tells us the images are fake.
Google Babble is reportedly a new Google messaging app that could be unveiled at Google I/O. Babble will offer users a way to combine all their messaging needs into a single unified app that could improve their messaging experience across devices.
The app could be for Android what iMessage is for iOS devices and Macs, or BBM is for BlackBerry handsets. Even Verizon has updated its Verizon Messages app extending SMS support to tablets and PCs.
The image above is not real, our source says, with various elements not consistent with the actual app. Most importantly the app is not called Babble in the first place – and we’re referring to the spelling of the word rather than it’s pronunciation. However, we don’t have the official name of the app for you. “Babble” is the name we first heard in connection with the app and that’s exactly how a person shown chatting in these screenshots writes the word:
I am testing Google Babble! This is awesome!!
Our source pointed to other inconsistencies with the app, including the wrong app icon and Holo theme, strange font combination choice and font spacing, but also design inconsistencies with the background colors and with the popup menus – just check the borders of the popups in the second and third screenshots and you’ll notice the photoshopping issues yourself. Furthermore, the screenshots contain elements from existing Google Talk and Google+ apps, while the input bar and action bar are “totally different.”
Moreover, while that voting feature highlighted in the second image does sound like an interesting addition to such an app, it comes with not-so-good English features: “JC has started a voting!” it reads, which should be enough to make us wonder whether this is a real Google app or not.
We’ll be on the lookout for more Google Babble – or whatever it’s actually called – details in the future. Are you looking forward to using such an app on your Android devices?
The post Leaked Google Babble screenshots fake, app not called Babble, source says appeared first on Android Authority.
Open content is great, but occasionally you have to weed out the bad apples when they crop up. Well this is one of those days, as reports are coming out that a couple of rogue games have made their way onto the Google Play store, imitating the popular Temple Run: Oz and Subway Surfers titles.
The malicious apps are posing as free versions of the games (although Subway Surfers is free in the first place), but are then linking users to download the actual copies anyway, no doubt installing a load of malware and god knows what else along with it. There’s even a disclaimer at the bottom of the store page stating that the downloads aren’t the actual games, but sadly these malicious apps appear to still be receiving positive reviews, further duping users into downloading the suspicious software.
The games are being offered under the developer named “FREE GAMES (temple run oz subway surfers)“, so if you’ve recently acquired one of these games I’d double check who you downloaded it from. My advice, steer clear of any software which was not uploaded by official publishers, especially if it’s offering something for free.
If you have downloaded one of these apps then uninstall it right away and scan your phone using some malware detection software like Avast or AVG, there are lots of decent free ones on the play store.
As always, be sensible when picking your downloads; check the developers and read the descriptions. Installing pirated or suspiciously cheap apps will probably result in you getting more than you bargained for. And just because something is highly reviewed doesn’t always mean that it’s from a trustworthy source.
The post Fake Temple Run: Oz and Subway Surfers games appear on Google Play appeared first on Android Authority.
