Lumia 640 and 640 XL prices for India possibly revealed ahead of launch
New import data from India has revealed possible prices for the Lumia 640 and the Lumia 640 XL Windows Phones for that country. The data shows that the Lumia 640 Dual SIM has a declared price of INR 4,683 ($75), while the Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM has a price of INR 6,710 ($107).
Relive classic RPG moments in Final Fantasy: Record Keeper
Last week Square Enix announced that their popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) Final Fantasy XI will be coming to mobile in 2016. Mobile Final Fantasy fans need not wait for next year for a new Final Fantasy game, luckily! Final Fantasy: Record Keeper from DeNA and Square Enix has just launched on iOS and Android.
Final Fantasy: Record Keeper is the first mobile Final Fantasy game to bring classic moments from the entire series to life. Think of it as a greatest hits release, with players able to recruit famous Final Fantasy heroes like Cloud and Lightning and participate in battles from beloved games in the series. Record Keeper is free to play and quite a lot of fun for RPG fans. Read on for our quick impressions!
Saving the Final Fantasy universe
In Final Fantasy: Record Keeper, a special kingdom exists in which stories are celebrated as artwork. The entire history of the Final Fantasy series is preserved as paintings and kept within a castle. Walk along its halls and you’ll see paintings dedicated to the 16-bit Final Fantasies, fan favorite Final Fantasy VII, and even newer games like Final Fantasy XIII. One day the content of the paintings starts to vanish, threatening the very existence of the kingdom.
To save the kingdom, players will have to jump into each painting and relive the events it celebrates. The first painting is Final Fantasy VII. You’ll start out battling Shinra soldiers and robots. Only instead of 3D battles like in the original PlayStation game, the battle now takes place entirely in two dimensions! It’s a real treat seeing characters from various Final Fantasy games all rendered in the same 16-bit art style.
Familiar battle system
Record Keeper’s battles work the same way as in traditional Final Fantasy games. An Active Time Battle meter constantly fills at the bottom of the screen. Once it fills up, players can attack, defend, use abilities like spells, or perform a Soul Break.
The Soul Break is a devastating special move capable of hurting every enemy the party faces. Naturally it uses its own meter that fills as you land hits against opponents. Finally, you’ll also be able to summon giant monsters like Bahamut to fight for your side.
Build your army of heroes
After completing the first Final Fantasy VII dungeon, a black mage and a white one will join your party. They look just like their 8-bit sprites from the original Fantasy. But Record Keeper has much more exciting rewards to work towards. Complete dungeons and earn high ratings to unlock classic heroes like Squall from Final Fantasy VIII, Cloud from VII, Lightning from XIII, and many more. You can even auto equip party members if you’re not concerned with manually setting your dream team’s lineup.
Being a free to play game, Final Fantasy: Record Keeper has a stamina system. Each dungeon you play will deplete some of your stamina, which refills over time. Should you lose in the middle of a dungeon, it costs premium currency to continue as well. We’ve seen in many games of this type, and everything seems pretty reasonable and fair so far.
If you’re a fan of the Final Fantasy series, Record Keeper is a must-play. Try it, build your own team of heroes, and save the Final Fantasy universe one classic battle at a time!
- Free – Download Now
Microsoft reportedly still working on Android apps to run on Windows Phone
When it comes to Microsoft’s mobile future, everything is on the table, including the possibility of running Android apps to fill in the ‘app gap’. Windows 10 for phone is not even out the door yet, but intel on Microsoft continues to keep this strategy alive.
A new report from Neowin sheds more light on this program’s status and obstacles.
The Olio Model One is a slick and stylish smartwatch starting at $595
A new start up company, Olio Devices, has just launched pre-orders for a limited run of its first product, the Olio Model One.
It’s a very slick looking smartwatch that’s compatible with the iPhone, with prices beginning at $595.
Olio Devices is headed up by CEO Steve Jacobs, who previously worked in product design for companies like Apple, HP, Beats by Dre, Google, and Amazon. In terms of its construction, The Olio Model One sound like it has been made to both look good as well as handle a lot of abuse. The company says:
The Model One cases are made from 316L stainless steel, cold-forged 9 times for hardness, milled, then hand finished with a fine hairline texture and mirror-polished highlights. The front and rear crystals are created using our custom guilloché texturing process on ion-exchange glass, to result in best-in-class impact and scratch resistance.
Like many smartwatches, the Olio Model One has been designed to handle messages and notifications from smartphones, but Olio Designs says it can handle even more with a feature called Olio Assist. It states:
Olio Assist is a cloud-based personal assistant that is solely focused on saving you time. It develops an understanding of your preferences, considers your current context, and offers insightful suggestions that let you stay focused on what matters most in the moment.
The battery life of the Olio Model One is suppose to last up to two days. The company is currently taking reservations for a limited run of 500 stainless steel watches for the price of $595, along with 500 black steel watches priced at $745. The first units are supposed to ship to those customers sometime this summer.
Source: Olio Devices
iOS 8, OS X Yosemite and future shock
I love my Macs and my iOS devices, but I can’t help but feel like things are getting out of control.
When I look at the gadgets that my family and I take for granted, I feel like I live in the future. Smart tablets, smart phones, smart watches. Despite all these smart devices, though, there’s a basic dysfunction that I find frustrating, and that many others find overwhelming.
2015 is certainly not the cyberpunk mega-city I briefly fantasized about for a time in the 80s, but it’s the future regardless. And every day I talk to people who are overwhelmed by it. Exhausted by it. And need a break from it.
That’s why I think Apple’s on the right track with iOS and OS X, and I’m really interested to see where they go next. Continuity features iOS 8 and Yosemite have profoundly changed my workflow. I effortlessly make calls from my Mac using my iPhone, and don’t think twice when switching from Safari on my iPhone to the same page and browser on my Mac.
Until it all stops working, that is. Then I have to get out and fiddle — like a mechanic working on a mid-century car under a shady tree in his yard — to get it all to function again.
We at iMore recently took a look at iOS 8, six months later, and each recognized that there are still some unfinished parts to the software we’ve been using for half a year now. It seems like we frequently get to March or April wondering why things still aren’t as stable or polished as we want them to be.
Apple and many other consumer electronics companies have produced a very attractive, very seductive view of the future, but the technology can still be finicky in actual use. All those edges aren’t polished smooth yet, but I have faith it will be; each progressive release of Yosemite and iOS 8 has shown movement in the that direction.
That said, I don’t know a lot of people who have the patience to fiddle with things until they work. They just want them to work, the first time, and every time. When they don’t, they get upset.
That’s how I feel about my dishwasher and my car, and that’s how others feel about their computers or their smartphones. These are the customers I help every day I work in my local computer store. They have neither the patience nor the time nor — in many cases — the technical acumen to diagnose and fix problems with their smartphone or their computer. “It has a virus” has become an all-purpose mantra; the 2015 equivalent to 1620’s “He must be possessed by the Devil.”
So I’m earnestly hoping that in 2015, Apple’s focus is on ratcheting down all the loose, rattling parts of iOS and OS X and tightening things up. I talked in November about my desire to see Apple focus on the fundamentals: A Snow Leopard-style release for OS X this year (Snowsemite, perhaps?) and likewise for iOS 9 would be welcome.
Sure, Apple, throw us a few new features, but let’s get this ship a bit more seaworthy than it feels right now.
Am I complaining about nothing? Or do you feel as I do that iOS 8 and Yosemite are just a bit looser than they really need to be? Let me know in the comments.
If you want an iPhone but don’t like Apple, here’s your alternative…
Samsung has been at its most successful when filling voids in Apple’s iPhone lineup: It offered Verizon support up until 2011, large screens up until 2014. What voids are left to fill now?
The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge have to answer that question, starting with today’s pre-order and carrying over to April 10’s release date and beyond. It’s an answer I’m truly interested in seeing, because right now I have no idea to whom I could recommend either of those phones.
This is where I pause and give a trigger warning to all my Android friends. Part of my covering the iPhone is covering competition to the iPhone: How other companies choose to counter-program Apple fascinates me as a marketer, and how well they do it directly affects me as a customer. The better the competition, the harder everyone has to work. Cool? Cool!
Four or five years ago, I could have recommended the Samsung Galaxy to people who wanted an iPhone but needed to use Verizon. Two years ago, I could have recommended a GS4 to someone who wanted an iPhone but really needed a bigger screen. Last year, I could have recommended a GS5 to someone who wanted an iPhone but felt they absolutely had to have a replaceable battery, SD card, and/or waterproofing. The GS6, however…
With its newest smartphone, Samsung has gone back to the GS series looking like an iPhone — from multiple angles — complete with analogs for Touch ID and Apple Pay. They also got rid of everything they spent the last year advertising as a differentiator: the aforementioned battery, SD card, and waterproofing. The price is also premium, so there’s no money to be saved here either.
That means the only person I can think of recommending a Galaxy S6 to is someone who wants an iPhone, but hates Apple and iOS. Even then, they’d have to really want an iPhone without Apple or iOS. If they just preferred Android, I’d be tempted to recommend something else, like an HTC model (if camera wasn’t a priority) or Motorola, or a Nexus (unless it’s too big), or one of the increasingly interesting Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi.
I get the feeling Samsung is having the same problem: The company doesn’t know who their customer is any more than I do. They seem to be hoping that it’s people who want iPhones… but instead, those people are getting iPhones, and in record numbers to boot.
To be clear, this isn’t Samsung changing: Samsung actually changing would be staying a course for more than a year. It’s also not Samsung listening to their customers: How do you listen to customers when you don’t know who they are? This is Samsung going back to a strategy that worked in the past, but for reasons that no longer exist.
Here’s why that concerns me: There are very few companies in the world that have the resources to compete with Apple, and Samsung is probably the best-equipped of all of them. They’re a manufacturer — they’re often Apple’s manufacturer — and that means they don’t have to worry about having access to technologies or components. They’re also incredibly well financed: They have, effectively, limitless funds with which to compete. They can make anything.
Give that, Samsung should be pushing Apple. Hard. Instead of playing catch-up, Samsung should be leaping ahead and forcing Apple to play that game. Instead of an iPhone 6 design complete with Touch ID and Apple Pay, they should have features that terrify Apple and make all of us in the media wonder out loud how Apple will respond to them.
There’s nothing terrifying about the Galaxy S6, though. We’re not anticipating any of the S6’s new features moving to iPhone — they’re already all there. Instead, most everyone in the media is anticipating Apple’s incorporation of its own technologies like Force Touch and Taptics into its smartphone and tablet line, with nothing from Samsung even close to being on the radar.
That’s bad for me, and for anyone who wants competition. It’s bad for Apple, which can always benefit from tough competition. Whether or not it’s bad for Samsung, though, we’ll have to wait and see. I’m sure the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge will garner favorable reviews from mainstream outlets. It’s a beautifully tailored suit, but ultimately it strikes me as an empty one.
How it does in the market, and how much it moves the needle for Samsung, is going to be really interesting to see. I know I’ll be watching Android Central’s coverage closely! But I don’t think it will make much of a dent in Apple’s plans or marketing. And that’s not a good thing.
Get a free HP Stream 7 with a top-spec Surface Pro 3 from Microsoft UK
The HP Stream 7 is no stranger to finding itself on the Microsoft deals table and the UK store has yet another for prospective buyers to consider. Right now if you buy a top of the line, Intel Core i7 Surface Pro 3, Microsoft UK will throw in a Stream 7 completely free of charge.
BBM Meetings device and desktop apps updated with performance improvements and bug fixes
Have you been using BBM Meetings? If so, you’ll want to make sure you grab the latest updates to the device and desktop apps. BlackBerry has released new versions for most of the supported platforms including BlackBerry 10, Android, Windows and Mac and all the updates contain overall performance improvements and bug fixes that will ensure meetings run smooth.
AIVAnet 