Apple Announces April 10 Grand Openings for Apple Watch Shops in London, Paris, and Tokyo
Apple today officially announced April 10 grand openings for its three dedicated Apple Watch shops located in high-end department stores in London, Paris, and Tokyo. As previously outlined, the store-within-a-store locations are at Selfridges in London, Galeries Lafayette in Paris, and Isetan in Tokyo.
The new locations appear set to handle only Apple Watch viewing and sales, with customers being directed to other Apple retail stores for their support needs.
The Selfridges Apple Watch shop will be located near the entrance to the iconic Wonder Room, a massive shopping hall that houses a wide selection of luxury jewelry and watch brands alongside a concept store and mezzanine wine bar. Apple has reportedly been drawing employees from other retail stores in London to staff the new shop. The Galeries Lafayette shop will take over four balcony sections overlooking the main rotunda of the department store.
Apple will begin in-store previews and pre-orders for the Apple Watch on April 10, with launches in the first wave of countries coming two weeks later. The high-end gold Apple Watch Edition models will only be available at select Apple retail stores, and the dedicated Apple Watch shops at these luxury department stores will almost certainly also be featuring the gold watches, which are priced from $10,000 to $17,000.
The first Apple Watch apps are already here
You can’t actually buy an Apple Watch for another month or so, but Apple has already opened the gate for apps. 9to5Mac points out a slew of freshly updated apps, including Twitter, WeChat, Evernote and the weather app Dark Sky (shown above), among others. While regular developers won’t be able to submit their wearable-ready apps until later, this select group is getting started early. There will be a section in the App Store just for the Watch, but if you can’t wait until April 24th you can start getting ready right now.
The One (M9) will be available to pre-order through Verizon next week
Earlier today, Verizon Wireless announced that it will start selling HTC’s flagship smartphone of 2015, the One (M9), in store and online starting Friday, April 10, with pre-orders kicking off on Wednesday, April 1. The handset will be available in either Gold-on-Silver or Metal Gray colorways with a down payment of $199.99 on a new 2-year contract or for $24.99 per month for 24-months with Edge.
For those in need of a refresher on the handsets specifications, the One (M9) packs a 5-inch LCD3 display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset powered by four 1.GHz Cortex-A53 CPU’s, an Adreno 430 GPU, 3GB of RAM, a 20.7-megapixel rear-facing shooter, a 4-megapixel front-facing camera and a 2,840 mAh non-removable Li-Po battery.
The full press release can be seen below:
The HTC One M9 will be available for pre-order from Verizon Wireless beginning April 1 and will be available for purchase online and in stores starting April 10. The smartphone with its all-metal design will be available in dual tone Gold on Silver or Metal Gray color models for $199.99 with new two year activation. Customers can also get the smartphone for $24.99 per month for 24 months with Verizon Edge.
Today’s social media world is all about sharing and telling a visual story with your phone, whether you’re focused on taking the best selfies to show your #OOTD (outfit of the day) or videos of your travel adventures. The HTC One M9 is built with that in mind, featuring a 20-megapixel rear camera and Ultrapixel front facing camera with built-in advanced editing tools for added photography fun. And with Verizon 4G LTE you just upload them to your social media apps without thinking. Without Verizon, you may find yourself searching for Wi-Fi.
Many of us have been in that situation where we’re showing a friend the latest viral video and they ask “can you make it louder?” only to sadly tell them that your phone is already on full volume. No more. The HTC One M9 features HTC BoomSound™ – front-facing dual speakers with Dolby Audio™ surround and built-in amplifier.
A reliable 4G LTE network can make that music experience better too. You’re hanging out with friends and you want to be the DJ with your smartphone. With Verizon you’ll be streaming music for everyone to enjoy. Without it, who knows how long or how many times you’ll be buffering.
The HTC One M9 will launch with Advanced Calling1.0 capabilities. You can enjoy HD Voice and Video Calling to other compatible Verizon smartphones. Activating this feature also enables simultaneous voice and data use, so customers can talk and surf the web at the same time.
Come comment on this article: The One (M9) will be available to pre-order through Verizon next week
Samsung starts rolling out Lollipop OTA for the Note 4 in Spain
Samsung has now started pushing out the much-anticipated, eagerly-awaited Lollipop update to all unlocked models of the Note 4 located in Spain. This upgrade transports the latest build of the Android operating system to the handset, together with a handful of bug fixes, stability improvements and speed optimizations.
Hit the break for the full changelog.
- Material Design: You will quickly notice a whole new colorful look and feel to your device – from fluid animations to new application and system themes, colors and widgets.
- Notifications UI & Priorities: In order to alert you to the most timely and relevant information, the format and behavior of notifications have evolved:
- notifications will appear on the lock screen and are intelligently ranked by type and who sent them.
- you double-tap to open one, swipe left or right to clear one, or clear all notifications from the bottom of the list.
- you can set the priority and privacy of notifications for each application.
- very high priority notifications will pop up briefly over other applications so that you can take action.
- when you dismiss a notification on one device it will be dismissed on your other Android devices, if they are connected to the Internet.
- you can further tailor how notifications behave with the new Downtime and Ambient Display settings (see below).
- New Interruptions & Downtime Settings: You can tailor how interruptions behave, choosing to allow all, none, or only priority interruptions. You can personalize what counts as a priority interruption (reminders, events, calls, messages) and even tailor them to be from only contacts you specify. The Downtime setting will allow only priority interruptions during the times and days that you specify. e.g. allow only priority interruptions on the weekend.
- Recent Apps (Multi-tasking): The redesigned Overview space (formerly called Recents) will include both applications and separate activities within those applications. For instance, each open tab in Chrome will also appear here along with recent applications; both your Gmail Inbox and a draft email message will appear as separate cards. This provides a consistent way to switch amongst tasks.
- Flashlight: Lollipop includes a new flashlight option as part of Quick settings (swipe down with two fingers from the status bar to see it).
- Pin a view/app: Screen pinning allows you to keep a specific app or screen in view. For example, you can ‘pin’ a game and your child will not be able to navigate anywhere else on your phone.
- Battery: The Battery settings panel now shows an estimated projection for how much time you have left while discharging or charging. You can also enable a new battery saver mode that will save power by reducing performance and most background data operations to extend your battery life.
- Smarter Internet Connections: With Android Lollipop, your phone will not connect to a Wi-Fi access point unless there is a verified Internet connection. This feature improves hand-offs between Wi-Fi and cellular connections, helping to maintain your video chat or voice-over-IP (VoIP) call as you switch.
- Performance: Your phone now uses the new Android Runtime to help optimize application performance. After upgrading to Lollipop, your applications will undergo a one-time optimization process. Note that the optimization for ART requires more space.
- Security: Encryption can now use a stronger 256-bit key to help protect your data. Note that the stronger key willonly be used after you perform a factory reset on Android Lollipop. Otherwise encryption will continue to use 128-bit key. You can turn on encryption in the Security settings menu.
To start the update, make sure you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network. Then, from the home screen, press the Menu key, followed by Settings. Scroll to the bottom and tap ‘About Device’, followed by ‘Software Update and ‘Update Now’.
Come comment on this article: Samsung starts rolling out Lollipop OTA for the Note 4 in Spain
Google taking Niantic Labs’ Ingress to television
Roaming the world are seven million people that play Ingress, an augmented reality multiplayer game developed by Niantic Labs. The game, who’s developer was birthed by Google, directs players to go to locations and control portals on behalf of its two factions. Now, the quietly popular game is heading to a new medium: television.
Google has partnered with production company Sean Daniel to develop the Ingress television series. The two parties have yet to select a showrunner but, according to The Information, there are talks being held with candidates.
The show also has not been pitched to any networks for a pickup; however, there are some potential networks based on a few things. The futuristic, connected elements of Ingress would fit SyFy, AMC, or the rebranded Spike. SyFy may be the favorable landing for the show because Sean Daniel Company has a series airing on the network later this year.
Source: The Information
Via: CNET
Come comment on this article: Google taking Niantic Labs’ Ingress to television
HTC loses lead designer for the second year running as Jonah Becker announces his departure
In what is becoming an unwelcome trend, HTC’s design lead Jonah Becker said that he would be leaving the company, making this the second time in as many years the vendor has had to find a new lead designer.
HTC’s lead designer leaves after less than a year
For a tech company that places so much emphasis on design, we can’t help but think something’s up when one of the key designers leaves. Today, we bring you the sad news that HTC’s VP of Industrial Design, Jonah Becker, has announced his departure on Twitter. To our surprise, that’s less than a year after he picked up from where his predecessor Scott Croyle left off. With Croyle and Becker gone, this leaves Claude Zellweger the last remaining principal of One & Co — the design firm that HTC acquired back in late 2008 — running the design team at the smartphone company. According to a statement from HTC, Becker will be succeeded by Creative Director Daniel Hundt, who happens to look a lot like Apple’s Jony Ive.
It’s been an amazing seventeen year journey with One & Co and HTC, but it’s time for a new adventure. Stay tuned for details of what’s next.
– Jonah Becker (@JonahABecker) March 26, 2015
blast from the past. @JonahABecker good luck on your next step. @Claudibus good luck @htc pic.twitter.com/CDqM2APVmX
– Scott Croyle (@scroyle) March 27, 2015
Becker’s announcement comes just a week after HTC’s shakeup at the top level, where Peter Chou passed on his CEO title to chairwoman Cher Wang, in order to focus on the company’s new Future Development Lab. It’s not clear as to why Becker has left HTC so relatively soon after Croyle, but we have learned from our source that there is an ever increasing power struggle between the design team and sales team these days. Another source told us the switch from the M8’s UltraPixel main camera to the M9’s 20-megapixel counterpart is an example of such.
And here is the full statement we received from HTC regarding Becker’s exit:
We can confirm that Jonah Becker has left HTC; he had been with the Company since HTC acquired One & Co over six years ago. We would like to thank Jonah for his work with HTC, and wish him all the best in his future endeavours. He has been succeeded by Daniel Hundt, based in our San Francisco design office.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
Source: Jonah Becker (Twitter)
Nuzzel for Android keeps up with the most popular stories from your social circles
Nuzzel is a service that takes a unique spin on curating content for you by crowd sourcing what your friends and social circles think is popular.
The app hooks into your Facebook and Twitter accounts, then sees which stories and content are being tweeted and shared the most over a 24-hour span. Whichever stories are the most popular get dished up on your main feed in the app, from which you can share/tweet/link the stories again, thus completing the bloated cycle of viral news stories on social media. Seriously, though, if you have tons of Facebook friends and follow huge amounts of Twitter accounts, this is a great way to simplify things.
Nuzzel has a few other features, too, such as being able to simplify web pages and remove the bloat formatting you may not want to see, and it’ll give you easy ways to check out features feeds that may be sharing popular stories that aren’t floating around in your current social circles. It can also notify you whenever many of your friends are all talking about the same thing, whether it’s a tweet or new page. Definitely a useful tool for social media power users.
The app is free to download, so even if you’re on the fence about it, it can’t hurt to take it for a test drive.
Come comment on this article: Nuzzel for Android keeps up with the most popular stories from your social circles
Is this what the LG G4 Note will look like?
This summer, it seems that LG will join Samsung in releasing a handset that is centered around the use of a stylus. The name device itself have yet to be confirmed but it is currently being called the G4 Note (or G Note). In fact, it could be the device that LG selects as its flagship for 2015. Not much is know about the G4 Note at this time, but images have surfaced showing an alleged pre-release model.
The images were posted by s3rv1cet3ch on the XDA Forums and show the front and rear of the device. The front looks like a cross between the G3 and G Flex 2. The bottom of the front features the company logo on a black frame that is outlined with grey.
The rear shows what seems to be either metal or some either high quality material. It looks identical to any other flagship device released by LG within the last two years due to the rear button setup. The buttons are not shiny and instead look like they have a matte finish. Viewing from the back, you will notice that the stylus slot is placed on the top left. Samsung goes with bottom placement for its styluses.
The software images do not giveaway much aside from the version of Android running. Here, we see Android 5.0.2 Lollipop in the form of build LRX22G.
Source: XDA Forums
Via: 9to5Google
Come comment on this article: Is this what the LG G4 Note will look like?
HTC One E9 leak confirms glossy plastic flagship experience
AndroidCentral has reported an image leak of the One E9, courtesy of @upleaks.
The phone will offer the top-of-the-line hardware in a plastic chassis, as can been seen in the photo. It is likely to be marketed as the One E9 Plus solely to Asian markets since the One E8 was marketed in this manner.
Supposedly, the device will be released in China next week at around $480.
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