Mobile Devices - Page 127

A German customer scanned a QR code printed on a Heinz ketchup bottle and was directed to a pornography website. The QR code was supposed to lead Daniel Korell to a special promotion offering personalized ketchup bottles, but... didn't.

The domain in question, sagsmithheinz.de, wasn't renewed by Heinz - and a German porn company snagged the domain. To capitalize on the unique marketing opportunity, the porn company also offered Korell a complimentary subscription.

"We really regret the incident," a Heinz representative told Korell on Facebook. Heinz offered a personalized ketchup bottle to Korell as an apology, and while he admitted he "probably" wouldn't suffer permanent damage - but accepted the offer.

It looks like the folks at Utah Valley University have a good sense of humor, after installing walking, running and texting lanese in its Student Life & Wellness Center. The stairway was the brain child of the Marketing & Communications Department, tasked with "enhancing the center's design through the use of art and graphics."

Not surprisingly, the new stairway has received a significant amount of national and international attention - especially with most of us having a story related to watching a person, fully engrossed with using a smartphone, do something potentially reckless or dangerous.

"When you have 18- to 24-year-olds walking on campus glued to their smartphones, you're almost bound to run into someone somewhere; it's the nature of the world we live in," said Matt Bambrough, creative director at UVU. "But that isn't the reason we did it - we used that fact to engage our students, to catch their attention and to let them know we are aware of who they are and where they're coming from. The design was meant for people to laugh at rather than a real attempt to direct traffic flow."

In a very surprise move, Chinese smartphone maker Oukitel has unveiled its latest smartphone prototype which packs an insane 10,000mAh internal battery. This is a battery that could truly last throughout an entire day of super-heavy use, without needing to recharge.

In the images we have above and below, you can see that the Oukitel handset features a black chassis, and quite a tough-looking exterior. Oukitel hasn't named the smartphone just yet, but it does pack Android 5.1 Lollipop, a 10,000mAh battery, which should cause most of the surrounding devices some issues, as the battery will be generating a decent amount of heat.

We don't know when the Oukitel smartphone is coming out, but it's great to see a company doing something different with a smartphone packing a 10,000mAh battery.

It appears the North Korean government has cracked down on mobile phone access to foreigners living inside the reclusive country. Foreign residents have been blocked from accessing 3G networks, while North Korean citizens remain unable to visit Internet websites outside of the country. Foreign visitors have the ability to purchase 3G mobile SIM cards, with access only lasting about the same amount of time as their visit.

"Unfortunately we are facing Internet service outage from the local Internet provider's side with no estimated time, we will keep you posted once the service is back to normal," according to a memo sent to subscribers of the Koryolink mobile provider.

The block started on Friday local time, and it's unknown what caused the sudden restriction. Of the country's 24 million residents, about 2.5 million of them are currently phone subscribers. There is concern that users with access to the Internet will find unrestricted information, which can be shared with other residents.

Do you have $91,000 spare to blow on a smartphone? Too bad. Someone else shelled out a couple of house deposits on the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge Iron Man Limited Edition smartphone.

JD.com, China's second largest e-commerse retailer, auctioned off just one of the Galaxy S6 edge Iron Man Limited Edition smartphones, with a huge 92,429 bids received, the final price was $91,635. At $91,635, this lucky bidder spent nearly 100 times what the phone retails for, at $1079.

While I love the Galaxy S6 edge, you'd have to be very wealthy - Tony Stark rich - to spend nearly $100,000 on a smartphone. But, what a collector's item, eh?

Apple CEO Tim Cook predicted that "2015 will be the year of Apple Pay," as the company launched its mobile payment ecosystem.

The Apple PR machine has discussed Apple Pay successes: "We've spoken to all of the top 100 merchants in the U.S., and about half will accept Apple Pay this year, with many more the following year," an Apple spokesperson informed Reuters.

However, analysts, retailers and industry experts think there is far too much optimism being displayed by Apple - with less than a quarter of retailers currently accepting Apple Pay. Just four of the 98 retailers in the National Retail Federation top 100 US retailers will adopt Apple Pay within the next year.

Chinese based smartphone manufacturer Nubia has released its 2015 flagship device in a recently issued press release - the borderless Nubia Z9.

Based on Android, this phone offers a 16 MP camera with image stabilization, fingerprint sensor technology and a release date of Q3 2015 in the United States. Said to be priced between $564 - $725 on release, this phone certainly looks promising.

The boarderless design includes a 5.2-inch full HD screen and Refractive Conduction Technology in order to provide what it claims is "more dazzling visual effects than any other smartphone of similar size."

Computex 2015 - A little different from the hardware news of late, Conexant Systems, Inc. has just released its ultra-low power, high-performance HD Audio CODEC called the CX8200.

Set to improve your mobile experience in products ranging from notebooks, ultrabooks and tablets, this release "intelligently drives speakers to optimize sound pressure level (SPL) while providing best-in-class speaker protection and eliminating background noise" as pointed out in a recent press release.

It's main feature isn't music, but to remove any background noise when listening to voice over your speakers alongside a louder overall multimedia experience and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for voice dictation and virtual assistants like Microsoft's Cortana.

Computex 2015 - At the ASUS Zensation event, the Taiwanese giant unveiled its latest foray into the smartphone world in the form of the Zenfone Selfie, which you guessed it - is aimed at selfie addicts.

The ASUS Zenfone Selfie packs a 5.5-inch 1080p display with 403PPI and a 178-degree IPS-based panel with 400 nits of brightness. Inside, we have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor, with a 13-megapixel camera on the front, and rear with dual LED real tone flash.

But what if your arm is too short, or you're trying to get a few friends in the shot? Never fear: Zenfone Selfie Swing will give you that extra bit of room to get everyone in the shot.

During the ATAP session at Google I/O, the company's ATAP team showed off the latest prototype of Project Ara. For those of you who don't know what Project Ara is, or may have forgotten, it's the world's first modular smartphone.

The company has demoed Project Ara previously, but other attempts have had issues, with the latest demo proving that Project Ara works. Google engineer Rafa Camargo built a Project Ara modular smartphone on stage, adding modules to the frame, turned it on, booted it up with the latest version of Android, and took a picture of the audience. If that's not proof that Project Ara works, I don't know what is.

Project Ara will allow consumers to customize every single aspect of their smartphone: the processor, camera, RAM, battery, and countless other components of the smartphone. For those who don't use a front facing camera, don't install one! This space can be used for an SD card slot, or a bigger battery. Project Ara is aiming to hit a point where you won't need to buy an entire new phone when you want to upgrade, as you'll be able to upgrade just the components you want.

Samsung has just unveiled the ultimate smartphone for Iron Man fans, with the new Galaxy S6 edge Iron Man Limited Edition smartphone looking bloody gorgeous. Check out the video detailing the new handset, below.

As you can see, this is a Galaxy S6 edge that has had no detail left untouched. The entire handset is themed in Iron Man colors: red and gold, while you also get a wireless charger in the box that sports the same look. Samsung has donned the Galaxy S6 edge Iron Man Limited Edition with a theme, which looks slick, even down to the phone dialer.

Samsung has said that the new Galaxy S6 edge Iron Man Limited Edition smartphone is "available in select countries", with no details on pricing just yet.

Google has updated the Chromecast app, which makes it easier to get streaming content through to your TV or display. The Mountain View-based giant has updated both its iOS, and Android apps.

The new Android and iOS apps will provide users with a reworked hardware view that will provide each Chromecast with its own card, with a current backdrop and casting status now shown. Not only that, but you can now browse through your backdrop history, as well as quickly changing those pictures and their cycles.

If you want to update your Chromecast app, hit up the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

Google has owned multitasking on Android for quite a while now, but it looks like Apple might play catch up when it releases iOS 9 in the near future. iOS 9 might usher in proper multitasking to the iPad, allowing two apps to be open at once, side-by-side, according to sources close to 9to5Mac.

iOS 9 will reportedly offer 1/2, 1/3 and 2/3 views depending on the app being used, with the option of running two separate applications at once, or multi views of the same apps. Split-screen app support was planned for iOS 8, but Apple said the feature wasn't ready and pushed it back to iOS 8.1, where history repeated itself, and Apple pushed the feature back to iOS 9.

With Apple reportedly preparing a larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro, it could be perfect timing to see true multitasking come to the iPad with iOS 9.

Apple is set to unveil its next generation iPhone later this year, with images of the purported iPhone 6S popping up... with dual rear-facing cameras. We've previously heard that the new iPhone would feature a "DSLR-like" rear-facing camera, but this is an interesting beast.

The images turned up at 9to5Mac, so this isn't just any leak. We've heard rumors of dual rear-facing cameras on the new iPhone before, so that's not new. But, with no major redesign planned for the new iPhone 6S, Apple will need to do as much as it can inside of the phone, while adding an additional rear-facing camera isn't that much work for the company.

The bigger question remains: what will Apple do with the dual rear-facing cameras on the iPhone 6S? This is of course just a rumor for now, but what would Apple do with those cameras? What do you want to see happen?

Chinese electronics company Xiaomi has seen great success in China, Brazil, India, and other emerging markets - but wants to try its hand at taking over the United States and Europe.

The company has launched an online trial to its Mi Store, with a small number of accessories, wearables and headphones available to Western shoppers. Analysts believe this is the first step for Xiaomi to prepare its smartphones and tablets to launch in new markets.

Previously, Xiaomi officials said it was focused on releasing its low-priced electronics to emerging markets. However, that didn't mean key mobile markets would be ignored, as the Chinese company wants to take its time before trying to launch into established - and lucrative - markets outside its core locations.

Microsoft's upcoming launch of Windows 10 is a major effort to win back consumers left disappointed with Windows 8/8.1, including mobile users. The company's Windows 10 Mobile updates will occur under Microsoft's supervision, with wireless carriers left out in the cold.

The company sent an email update to ZDNET and discussed how the Microsoft Denim update, which was announced in September 2014, still isn't available for the T-Mobile Lumia 635, AT&T Lumia 830, and several other phones. Instead, users are running "badly outdated versions," and Microsoft doesn't want that to happen to customers later this year.

"Here at Microsoft, we take our responsibility to keep Windows secure seriously," Microsoft said in an Ignite blog post. "We follow up on all reported security issues, continuously probe our software with leading edge techniques, and proactively update supported devices with necessary updates to address issues. And today, we're announcing this continuous update process applies to all Windows 10 devices, including phones."

As it stands, we don't know who will be making the new Nexus, but according to Android Pit, LG has said that it is still considering making the new Nexus for Google.

With Google I/O just a couple of weeks away, I'd dare say that whichever company is making the new Nexus would know by now, as production would've been underway for weeks by now. Android Pit asked its source if LG was involved with the new sure-to-be Android M-powered Nexus, to which their source replied "it's under consideration at LG".

Android Pit reached out to Google for a comment on its partnership with LG and the new Nexus, but Google said it would "not comment on rumors or speculations". We should find out about the new Nexus in just a couple of weeks time at Google I/O 2015 which takes place May 28-29.

A couple of days ago we wrote about the upcoming next-gen iPhone and referred to it as the iPhone 7, but it looks like Apple will be instead releasing another incremental upgrade: iPhone 6S.

According to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is usually pretty spot-on with Apple rumors, the upcoming iPhone 6S will be the 'biggest incremental 'S' upgrade' Apple has ever done. The new iPhone 6S should feature twice the amount of RAM with 2GB of LPDDR4 versus the 1GB of LPDDR3 found in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus handsets.

Not only that, but we should see Apple use the A9 processor, an improved camera, new color option, sapphire display, strengthened shell, improved Touch ID and Force Touch just to name a few. I would dare say we'll also see iOS 9 unveiled with the new iPhone 6S, too. Kuo adds that we should expect a limited-edition iPhone 6S Plus that would feature a sapphire-based display, something Apple will be testing the waters with in smaller quantities.

Apple Pay wasn't the first mobile payment offering, but it certainly is the most high-profile solution for shoppers in the United States. It shouldn't be a surprise to hear that Apple Pay is in front of competitors, helping draw attention to the budding mobile payments market.

The Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a coalition supported by Walmart, CVS, and Target, hopes its CurrentC mobile payment solution can compete with Apple Pay. The company has not been able to successfully launch its payments app, though a "mid-sized market" is scheduled for sometime this summer.

"MCX has had another one of those really bad weeks," said Jordan McKee, analyst at the Yankee Group, in a statement published by TIME. "If they don't get something in the market soon, they're going to get passed by, plain and simple."

We've been reporting on the larger iPad Plus from Apple for a while now, but the latest rumor on the iPad Plus is that Apple has requested silver nanowire material samples from various display suppliers.

Panels that use nanowire material are more flexible than the usual touch panels, which could allow Apple to provide similar Force Touch technology found on the Apple Watch, to their upcoming business-focused iPad Plus. Not only that, but it looks like Apple is thinking about providing a stylus on the new iPad Plus, which would pit the larger iPad against the likes of Samsung's various Galaxy tablets.

The iPad Plus is expected to feature sapphire glass over the entire display, NFC connectivity, a USB Type-C connector, an 11,000mAh battery and much more. We should expect Apple to reveal the iPad Plus later this year.