This could be the HTC One M9 Plus
Images of the HTC One M9 Plus (or Ultra) has leaked again. It looks much like the basic One M9, except the camera lens is rounder. It’s also missing the Duo Camera setup that we saw in January’s leak. Sporting a 5.2-inch Quad-HD (2560 x 1440) display, it’s not much of an upgrade as one would expect. What I mean is that you would expect the display to be much bigger as in 5.5 to 6.0-inches. It’s also rumored that it will never leave China.
This image could be of a decoy unit, but based on the fact that the One M9 didn’t change all that much in terms of design, I wouldn’t expect the Plus version to look all that much different either.
source: Mobilissimo.ro
via: Phone Arena
Come comment on this article: This could be the HTC One M9 Plus
This could be the HTC One M9 Plus
Images of the HTC One M9 Plus (or Ultra) has leaked again. It looks much like the basic One M9, except the camera lens is rounder. It’s also missing the Duo Camera setup that we saw in January’s leak. Sporting a 5.2-inch Quad-HD (2560 x 1440) display, it’s not much of an upgrade as one would expect. What I mean is that you would expect the display to be much bigger as in 5.5 to 6.0-inches. It’s also rumored that it will never leave China.
This image could be of a decoy unit, but based on the fact that the One M9 didn’t change all that much in terms of design, I wouldn’t expect the Plus version to look all that much different either.
source: Mobilissimo.ro
via: Phone Arena
Come comment on this article: This could be the HTC One M9 Plus
For only $6.95 today this slim HTC One M8 hard case can be yours!
Transparent, impact resistant hybrid casing with a durable TPU bumper protects your HTC One M8 against impacts while wearing this SlimGrip Hybrid Case. For extra protection you’ll find TPU covering over the side buttons, making them easier to press, too! Get yours in black or white today and save 54%
Jennifer Lawrence’s new movie Serena arrives on Google Play before its US theater launch
Serena, starring Jennifer Lawrence, hits the Google Play Store before being released in theaters, and is currently available to rent for $9.99 in SD or $10.99 in HD.
Grab Samsung’s Galaxy S6 apps and wallpapers here
Called useful by some and bloat by others, the Galaxy S6 comes with the latest version of Samsung’s custom Android applications, which have been re-designed and spruced up with some new features for the latest Lollipop version of Touchwiz. XDA forum member Albe95 has ripped these apps from a Galaxy S6 and made them available for other Samsung Lollipop handsets owners.
To install these apks you will need to be running Touchwiz on an Android 5.0 Lollipop device. If you have recently received one of Samsung’s numerous OTA updates or have manually flashed some stock 5.0 Samsung firmware, you’re pretty much set and ready to go. You’ll just need to enable external apk installation in the developer options menu, unzip the files and install. Here are the links:
The Galaxy S6’s wallpapers are also up for grabs, which you can download from the images below (click to enlarge).
For additional screenshots and installation instructions for each of the apps, check out the source link below.
Could the Samsung Galaxy S6 have a major hardware fault before it’s even launched?
Samsung have chosen to completely refine their design and move away from the previously criticised ‘cheap’ looking handsets to a more premium build.
However, the move to a completely new frame and bezel setup may have resulted in the Galaxy S6 developing a quote significant hardware flaw before it’s even been launched.
According to some research and testing captured on a YouTube video, the flaw involves the screen not registering input near the bezel and will only recognise touch from a few millimetres into the screen.
This is what it should look like:
It seems like this isn’t just something that can solved with hardware and is in fact a fundamental flaw in the hardware of the Galaxy S6.
Can Samsung fix it before launch? Is this intended? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
The post Could the Samsung Galaxy S6 have a major hardware fault before it’s even launched? appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Apple and Other Companies Push Forward in Fight for Marriage Equality [Mac Blog]
A total of 379 companies, including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google, have joined together to urge the Supreme Court to rule in favor of blanketed nationwide support for marriage equality (via The Verge).
The companies filed an amicus brief yesterday, represented by law firm Morgan Lewis, in the on-going Obergefell v. Hodges case, wherein two men are arguing that the state of Ohio discriminates against legal out-of-state same-sex marriages. Apple, along with the 378 other companies, angled towards a business-focused case for supporting every couple’s right to marry.
Apple at the 44th Annual Pride Parade in San Francisco
The brief claims that due to “a fractured legal landscape with no uniform rule on same-sex marriage”, both employees and employers face increasingly burden-filled relationships, making it difficult to conduct proper business practices. The coterie of companies isn’t represented by just well-known tech companies, but small family-owned businesses and other big non-tech brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, and United Airlines, as well.
“The competition for top talent crosses state and even national borders. State laws that prohibit same-sex marriage make it harder for businesses to recruit and retain talented employees,” says Morgan Lewis Partner Susan Baker Manning, counsel of record on the brief. “The patchwork of inconsistent state marriage laws makes it challenging and more costly for employers to administer benefits systems when some employees are unable to marry, and other employees’ marriages are not recognized by the state. This burdens businesses by costing them both time and money.”
Obergefell v. Hodges will enter the Supreme Court in April, and is one of a few others it will hear regarding the marriage equality issue. The main issue expected to be covered is whether the Constitution protects all same-sex couples in their right to marry regardless of their state, or if individual states will retain the right to prohibit gay marriage.
Apple has, unsurprisingly, voiced support for same-sex marriage in the past and marched in pride parades in San Francisco, with CEO Tim Cook coming out as gay in a letter written to Bloomberg Business just last October. Most recently, last December the company voiced support in naming a proposed bill in Alabama after the Apple CEO that would focus on anti-discrimination in regards to sexual orientation in the work place. Currently, there are 36 states, and Washington, D.C., that support gay marriage.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Watch NASA’s orbiter approach the dwarf planet Ceres at 1PM ET
The largest object in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter is Ceres, an odd, water-rich proto-planet roughly the size of Texas (590 miles in diameter). Scientists have long puzzled about the origin of the bright white spot near the equator, which we recently learned is two bright spots. We’ll soon know a lot more about it as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has nearly reached Ceres. It’s already captured shots of the planet (above) and will soon go into a polar orbit at 13,500 km (8,300 miles) before descending to a survey altitude of 4,430 km (2,800 miles). Eventually, it’ll drop as low as 1,480km (950 miles) to capture high resolution mapping data and 3D images of Ceres. Once the mission is over it’ll remain the asteroid’s orbiting buddy forever.
Its first approach to Ceres will be beamed live from the Slooh community observatory starting at 1PM ET today. Unfortunately, Dawn will take fewer photos during this phase than planned due to the failure of two reaction wheels. Given that it’s already visited Mars and Vesta, another dwarf planet in the region, a few glitches are understandable. Despite the issues, we’re expecting the same spectacularly detailed images we saw of Vesta. That should help clear up theories as to what the white spots are, which have ranged from ice-gorged craters to cryo-volcanoes. Not to be biased, but we’re definitely pulling for the volcanoes.
Filed under: Science
Via: Space.com
Source: Slooh Observatory
Fifty Photo Shades – a simple black and white Windows Phone photo editor
While Fifty Shades of Grey tops the box office, the Windows Phone Store has a new photo editor to let you transform your images using 50 different shades to adjust the highlights, darks shadows and other aspects of your images.
Fifty Photo Shades has a simple interface where you can adjust the highlights and color tones after the image is converted to black and white to create some nice effects. The Windows Phone photography app may not be for everyone but it has potential of being a decent Windows Phone effects editor. The app just needs a little fine tuning on how it makes that initial conversion to black and white.
Samsung switches to LPDDR4 and UFS 2.0 memory, but what does it mean?
Earlier this week we took a look at Samsung’s new Exynos 7420 SoC, which is just one of the new technologies squeezed into the Galaxy S6. Samsung is also leading the way with faster LPDDR4 RAM memory and internal memory designed with the new UFS 2.0 standard.
UFS 2.0 internal memory replaces the common eMMC 5.0 / 5.1 standard found in most last generation handsets. We already covered the technology last week, and essentially it is designed for faster reading and writing from internal storage, allows for simultaneous read/write processes, and prioritizes incoming commands to execute them as quickly as possible.
Although flash memory doesn’t particularly mind how data is arranged, sequential read and write speeds can be important when dealing with large file sizes. Particularly when it comes to large HD video, lossless audio or game assets, which are usually stored neatly in large sequential chunks of data on the hard drive. But rather than relying purely on Samsung’s speed numbers, a newly published AndroBench comparison gives us a closer look at what the standard is capable of compared with last generation handsets.
http://embed.chartblocks.com/1.0/?c=54f88ab2c9a61d0d5569df80&t=29ebd26dc37d131
However, benchmarks don’t necessarily represent real world performance and you’re not going to notice these speed differences in day to day tasks. But when it comes to particularly media heavy reading or writing of data, UFS 2.0 is clearly a cut above eMMC 5.0.
New LPDDR4 RAM is the other half of Samsung’s latest memory arrangement, which is a successor to commonplace LPDDR3. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 SoC also features LPDRR4 memory.
Rather than storing large, permanent files, RAM is temporary memory used by applications and the operating system for whatever needs processing. LPDDR4 can offer up to a 50 percent performance boost than LPDDR3, depending on the implementation. The aim of the game here is increased memory bandwidth, which allows for faster communication between the RAM memory and the handset’s processors.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1
This is particularly important when it comes to memory intensive applications. Again we’re looking at media centric scenarios, where large chunks of data have to be moved around with minimal delay. One example is slow-motion video, where 120 image frames have to be stored in RAM memory each second. At 2K or 4K resolutions, that’s a lot of data to be pushing around, and additional bandwidth is very important in these types of applications. Gaming is also a potential benefactor here, as mobile GPUs have to pull resources from the main memory pool. Bandwidth requirements increase greatly at larger display resolutions.
Samsung’s Galaxy S6 LPDDR4 has a 1552MHz clock speed. Assuming the standard dual-channel 32-bit design as previous Exynos chips, this gives us a bandwidth of 24.8GB/s. For comparison, the Snapdragon 810 offers a similar bandwidth, while the older LPDDR3 in the Snapdragon 801 has a bandwidth of 12.8GB/s and the Exynos 5433 offers 13.2GB/s.
However, these are just upper limits and real world results rarely sustain this bandwidth. There also is not a direct one-to-one relationship between bandwidth and performance. Our own AnTuTu test shows a decent performance gain, but not the suggested 50 percent boost. Like UFS 2.0, you’re only likely to notice this improvement in some specific scenarios.
On top of a speed boost, LPDDR4 lowers the memory’s core voltage to 1.1 volts, down from 1.2 volts, and implements low voltage swing logic at 0.4 volts. This aims to help save on energy consumption, which is especially important in battery powered smartphones, given how often the memory is accessed.
In summary, the move to LPDDR4 and UFS 2.0 are complementary improvements to system memory, which will prove particularly useful when it comes to high resolution media playback and capture, gaming, and larger file transfers and downloads. The change here is just one of the many improvements introduced in the Samsung Galaxy S6 that should (hopefully) lead to an overall superior experience when compared to Galaxy handsets of the past.
AIVAnet 
