Engadget giveaway: win an iPhone 6 courtesy of Spigen!
Waiting on line in advance of an Apple product launch doesn’t sound like the best way to spend a weekend, but unless you queued up, it’s quite possible you’re still bumming around with a perfectly good, but now last-generation iPhone. There’s a glimmer of hope, however. The folks at Spigen have given us a pair of iPhone 6 handsets so two lucky Engadget readers can get their early adoption underway. And to help keep that pricey bit of smartphone tech safe and sound, Spigen has also included all five colors of its Neo Hybrid Metal case to go with each phone. These slim protective shells have interchangeable Dia-Cut aluminum frames paired with a soft, yet grippy material to provide shock and impact absorption. There aren’t any lines to suffer here, just head on down to the Rafflecopter widget below for up to three chances at winning an iPhone 6 and complete set of Neo Hybrid Metal cases.
- Entries are handled through the Rafflecopter widget above. Comments are no longer accepted as valid methods of entry. You may enter without any obligation to social media accounts, though we may offer them as opportunities for extra entries. Your email address is required so we can get in touch with you if you win, but it will not be given to third parties.
- Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so direct your anger at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
- Winners will be chosen randomly. Two (2) winners will each receive one (1) iPhone 6 (MG5D2LL/A, Gold, 64GB – GSM/T-Mobile) and five (5) Spigen Neo Hybrid Metal cases (silver, red, blue, gold, space gray).
- If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of being contacted. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Make sure that the account you use to enter the contest includes your real name and a contact email or Facebook login. We do not track any of this information for marketing or third-party purposes.
- This unit is purely for promotional giveaway. Spigen, Apple and Engadget / AOL are not held liable to honor warranties, exchanges or customer service.
- The full list of rules, in all its legalese glory, can be found here.
- Entries can be submitted until September 24th at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
Filed under: Announcements, Apple
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Microsoft’s new adapter beams video from your PC (or Android) to a TV
Want to wirelessly share video from your Surface without worrying about whether or not your TV can handle it? Microsoft now has you covered. Its simply titled (and previously hinted at) Wireless Display Adapter can beam content from Miracast-capable Windows 8.1 PCs and Android devices to any HDMI-equipped screen. Since you’re just mirroring your output, you can easily watch movies and presentations on a grander scale without requiring explicit app support, like you do with Chromecast. The add-on should reach North America in October for $60 — a fairly reasonable outlay if you want to avoid tethering yourself to the living room set.
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Peripherals, HD, Mobile, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
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Stack’s smart light bulb responds to the world around you
Many smart light bulbs… well, aren’t. You can control them, but they’re often blissfully unaware of what’s going on in your home. Stack aims to change that with its recently unveiled Alba bulb. This sensor-packed illuminator changes brightness and color based on the time of day, location and who’s present in the room. It’ll start with cooler, more natural white hues when you’re just waking up, but will switch to relaxing warm colors when it’s late. It will also dim or shut off the lights when there’s a lot of ambient light, or if you’ve left for work; alternately, it will come to life when there’s a big commotion. There’s a mobile app if you need to tweak settings, but the goal is to avoid using it as much as possible. Much like a Nest thermostat, Alba will learn appropriate behavior and (hopefully) let you keep your phone in your pocket.
You can pre-order the Alba system now ahead of its launch in early 2015. It’s relatively expensive at $150 for a starter kit with two bulbs and a hub ($60 for every additional bulb), but Stack believes this is a better value than higher-end options like Philips’ Hue — for similar pricing, you’re getting truly smart lighting that doesn’t require constant intervention. If you’ve ever grown tired of fiddling with switches and sliders throughout the day, this may be worth a closer look.
Filed under: Household
Via: Wired
Source: Stack
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Meet Engadget’s new buyer’s guide picks: The iPhone 6, Moto X and more!
Here at Engadget, we make good on our promises. So when we say we’re going to be updating our buyer’s guide more frequently, well, gosh darn, we mean it. Roughly two months after we re-launched the guide, we’re adding a bunch of new gadgets, including the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the new Moto X, HTC One M8 for Windows, the Acer C720 Chromebook, the NVIDIA Shield gaming tablet and the Moto 360 smartwatch. Of course, we also had to remove some of our original picks to make room for the new ones: The new, 5.2-inch Moto X takes the place of the old 4.7-inch one, while the Moto 360 overtakes the Samsung Gear Live — formerly our favorite Android Wear device. We’re also getting rid of all the BlackBerrys for now. That’s not to say BBM hold-outs should switch operating systems, but until we get to try the new BlackBerry Passport, we’re going to refrain from including those older models. Check out our guide right here, and stay tuned for more updates next month — who knows what we’ll be adding then!
Filed under: Announcements, Apple, HTC, NVIDIA
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Scotland finds independence on the web with new .scot domain
After heated debates and divided opinions, a slim majority of Scots voted to stay part of the UK in the recent Scottish independence referendum. Nevertheless, Scotland has achieved a slightly different type of liberty today, carving out a corner of the internet it alone can call home. The new .scot top-level domain is now officially open, meaning any and all can register websites with the Scottish-centric suffix. This “general release” follows the domain’s announcement in July, when certain organisations like Scouts Scotland got early access, and businesses were allowed to stake their claims to relevant addresses. The .scot domain is the latest UK-focused slice of the web to go live after .london sites went up for grabs earlier this month. It also beats a pair of Welsh domains that are expected to become available to the masses in spring next year — around the same time Scotland will no doubt be looking to break its six-year losing streak against Wales in the Six Nations.
Filed under: Internet
Via: The Telegraph
Source: .scot Blog
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Motorola’s new Droid Turbo says hello in leaked photos
Don’t fret, Verizon fans: Motorola’s long-running line of Droid devices hasn’t petered out just yet. It’s hard to miss the swirling rumors of an impending Big Red Moto X launch, but a new image obtained by HelloMotoHK lends a little credence to rumors of another Moto handset barreling down the ol’ product pipeline. It’s (supposedly) the Droid Turbo, yet another Verizon exclusive… and one that might have an awfully beefy slew of components lodged inside the curvaceous, textured shell you see above. Yes, fine, a spy shot of a phone’s back might not get you riled up, but some reports suggest it’ll pair a Quad HD display with a 2.65GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset and a 20-megapixel camera. HelloMoto’s report doesn’t do much to bear out all that speculation, though it does mention that the screen’ll be 5.2-inches diagonal and that the Turbo will have a front-facing speaker. For what it’s worth, Verizon has been getting in on the teasing lately, too: The official DroidLanding Twitter account cryptically noted that faster battery charging is a “bigger deal” a few weeks back, so we just may be on the cusp of another big announcement.
Filed under: Mobile
Via: AndroidBeat
Source: HelloMotoHK
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Some iPhone 6 Plus Owners Accidentally Bending Their iPhones in Pockets
As highlighted in a few reports shared in the MacRumors forums, a small but growing number of iPhone 6 Plus owners have reportedly bent their phones after carrying the devices in their pockets just days after launch. In one instance, a new iPhone 6 Plus was bent during a day of dancing, dining, and driving to a wedding.
Yesterday, I left at 10am with the iPhone in my left FRONT pocket of my suit pants. I drove 4 hours to a wedding, which also involved a lot of sitting during dinner etc but also 2-3 hours of dancing. I left at 2am and went to bed, driving home 4 hours back.
So in total, the 6 Plus was about 18 hours in my pocket while sitting mostly.
As I lay it on the coffee table and sat down on the couch to relax from the drive (yes, sitting again ), I saw the reflection of the window in the iPhones slightly distorted.
This potential for bending is of course not unique to the iPhone 6 Plus, with reports of bent iPhone 5 and 5s handsets surfacing in the past few years. As iPhones get thinner and larger, however, storage of the handset in a pocket becomes riskier. Unlike smaller phones that can slide out of the way, pressure points from sitting or bending now have greater potential to cause the longer iPhone to flex in a way that will damage the device.
Photo by DevinPitcher
To prevent bending, iPhone 6 Plus owners may want to remove their iPhones from their pockets before sitting or bending. If a pocket is unavoidable, then customers may want to place their device in a roomier pocket that allows the device to slide out the way. A rigid case may also provide protection from flexing or bending, as well damage from dropping the device.
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iOS 8.0.1 to Address Bugs With Phone, Keyboard, Videos in Safari, and More
Earlier this month, it was reported that Apple was preparing to seed carrier partners with iOS 8.0.1 even before the media event officially announcing launch dates for iOS 8 and the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Details on the update were unknown at the time, but we noted that we’d seen a significant uptick in activity from devices running iOS 8.0.1 in recent weeks.
Web traffic from devices running iOS 8.0.1 on Apple’s networks peaked around the time of Apple’s media event before tailing off a bit, but Apple does indeed appear to have provided the update to carrier partners and MacRumors has received word from a source that the updates addresses several bugs present in the iOS 8 golden master version released to the public last week. Among the issues:
– Phone: Addresses bugs with call forwarding and freezing when accessing visual voicemail
– Keyboard: Fixes an issue with keypad not appearing to enter iCloud Keychain verification codes
– Safari: Fixes a problem with videos occasionally not playing
– Sharing: Fixes AirDrop support for Passbook passes
– VPN: Addresses an issue with installing VPN profiles
Beyond the documented fixes, iOS 8.0.1 will undoubtedly fix a number of other early users have been experiencing although it will likely still be several more minor updates before most of them can be addressed. A release date for iOS 8.0.1 is not yet known, but it could appear fairly soon given that it is already in the hands of partners for testing and approval.
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iPhone 6 Component Costs Estimated to Begin at $200, Samsung Supplying Some A8 Chips
As it routinely does for new devices, IHS iSuppli has taken apart the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in an effort to estimate Apple’s costs for the components included in the new devices, sharing the results with Re/code. According to IHS iSuppli’s teardowns, parts and labor costs for the iPhone 6 are estimated to begin at $200 for the 16 GB iPhone 6 model, giving Apple a roughly 69 percent gross profit margin on the devices.
That number of course does not take into account an array of other costs, from research and development to software to marketing and distribution, but it does offer an interesting glimpse at what goes into an iPhone.
The margins are in line with more recent iPhone models but higher than the earliest ones. The gross margin on the iPhone 5, released in 2012, and the iPhone 5s, released last year, were about 69 percent, teardown studies at the time of their release showed. On the lower-priced iPhone 5c, also released in 2012, the gross margin was closer to 68 percent. By comparison, the gross margin on the very first iPhone, released in 2007, was closer to 55 percent.
Apple does earn slightly higher margins on higher-capacity iPhone 6 models, as the 128 GB of storage is estimated to cost $47 more than the base 16 GB storage while the device retails for $200 more.
The iPhone 6 Plus is also a higher-margin item for Apple, with IHS iSuppli estimating the device costs just $16 more to produce than the corresponding iPhone 6 models, with roughly half of that difference coming from the display and the remainder presumably related to the rear camera module with optical image stabilization, a larger battery, and other minor differences.
Another interesting observation from IHS iSuppli is that Samsung does indeed remain involved in production of the main A-series processor for the iPhone. Early teardowns had shown the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus using A8 chips manufactured by TSMC for the first time, but IHS iSuppli says TSMC is providing 60 percent of A8 chips while Samsung is handling the remaining 40 percent.
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Are the glory days over for Samsung? Shares hit two-year low
Remember how good things were for Samsung two years ago? Just about everywhere you turned it seemed someone was talking about the Galaxy S3. The worm had turned and people were considering something other than the iPhone. Fast forward to mid-2014 and we’re looking at a different situation.
Samsung declined 2.3 percent to 1,161,000 won, its lowest price since July 2012. The company that ships one of every four smartphones in the world has plunged 15 percent this year, wiping about $30 billion from its market value. – Businessweek
Sure, some of this could come as a result of two new, larger iPhones. It happens every year. But, that’s only part of the equation, if you ask us. Companies like LG, Motorola, Oppo, Huawei, and ZTE have been clawing away in various markets, chipping at Samsung’s lead. What’s more, we don’t have those low-cost non-contract models coming from Samsung like we do the others.
In Samsung’s corner we have the new Galaxy Alpha, Galaxy Note 4, and Galaxy Note Edge. All are set to roll out over the coming weeks and months. Will customers warm back up to the new design choices?
Are you a former Samsung owner who made the jump to another brand? What was it that pulled you away? Conversely, is there anything that you see from Samsung that entices you to switch to their side of things?
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The post Are the glory days over for Samsung? Shares hit two-year low appeared first on AndroidGuys.
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AIVAnet 