HTC One ME announced with Mediatek Helio X10
New smartphone will be available in China and other Asian markets
HTC China took the wraps off its latest android smartphone, the HTC One ME. The new device debuts with Mediatek’s octa-core Helio X10 processor – a 64-bit chipset, clocked at 2.2 GHz.
The One ME sports a metal framed polycarbonate body like its predecessors the One E9+ and One M9+. The HTC One ME features a 5.2-inch Quad HD display with a resolution of 2560 X 1440 pixels and a fingerprint sensor. Additionally, i t’s fitted with HTC’s BoomSound, an excellent sound system with Dolby Surround.
Running on Android 5.0 Lollipop, HTC One ME comes with dual-sim, LTE capability. Specs-wise it features 3GB RAM, 32GB internal memory, microSD support and a 2840 mAh battery. The device has a 20MP main shooter with 4K video recording and a 4MP Ultrapixel front camera.
HTC’s latest offering is set to release first in China, followed by other Asian markets and will be available in three colors: meteor grey, gold sepia, and rose gold. There has been no word on pricing or availability in other markets yet, but we expect further news soon.
HTC One ME Image Gallery
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Instagram is ready to make some serious money
After launching ads a year and half ago Instagram is now giving advertisers a much more powerful tool to integrate their ads. The tools include “Shop Now”,”Install”and “Sign Up” buttons.
These button appears at the bottom right of the advertisement. The company made advertisement open for all the advertisers. It is worth noting that pressing the buttons do not take you away from Instagram completely. Instead, it open a mini version of a browser within the app, so that when you are done buying or installing you will be returned to the app itself.
Instagram has always been a potential advertisement channel, able to drive its 300 million+ users to buy or download an app.
“The API comes polished—able to manage, track and measure marketing campaigns—thanks to borrowed technology and lessons learned from Facebook“
Instagram is all ready and plans to roll out this update gradually starting later this week in Spain. At the end Instagram wants to make advertisement available to all business areas no matter whether it is small or large. The API will plug Instagram into the broader ecosystem of social ad platforms.
In my opinion this is indeed a really big boost to the advertising sector. Local brand names as well as small and starting companies can now easily campaign their products by using Instagram as their path to advertise. However as delicious as it may seem, it can cause a lot of adverse effects. Like Facebook, a lot of users don’t want to see advertisement spam in their feed. I hope Instagram is prepared for such a scenario.
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Google camera updated to v2.5
App is the same as the one found in Android M developer preview
With all the news surrounding Android M, there has been a lot of debate on the new features. People have been resorting to forums to procure the extracted APK files and goodies of all sorts from the Android M developer preview released during Google I/O 2015.
Google has now officially updated the Google Camera to version 2.5 on the Play Store. This is the same version that comes bundled with Android M developer preview and brings a lot of new features.
First of all, it replaces the old focusing animation with a new simpler looking one. It doesn’t give any such difference to the focus, might be a placebo effect. But it surely does refresh the camera UI.
The HDR mode is much faster now and plays a confirmation sound when the photo is clicked in this mode. A much needed feature that has been added, is the small thumbnail preview in the bottom right after an image is clicked.
Screenshots
Exploring the settings, we find that the lens blur effect has been fixed to “normal” quality now. Doesn’t make much of a difference as its a scarcely touched feature.
The update is rolling out to the Play Store and you can grab it from the link below. If you don’t want to wait then you can grab it from APK Mirror.
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Hitman: Sniper now available on the Google Playstore
Acclaimed video game developer, Square Enix announced on their official hitman blog yesterday that they will be releasing the game Hitman: Sniper on both the App Store and the Google Playstore on Thursday, June 4th. It has been one of the most awaited titles since the teaser trailer for Hitman: Sniper was released almost an year back. Its finally available on the Google Playstore for $4.99!
Check out the new launch trailer below:
Hitman: Sniper features Agent 47 in a highly competitive gameplay environment. It will be your job to complete the various assassinations and assignments set in beautiful scenic Montenegro. A giant map that will let you take down enemies from multiple vantage points. Epic slow motion shots and highly detailed graphics will keep you coming back for more. Just as it was in Hitman GO, you’ll be able to replay all the missions multiple times to get you perfect “Stealth” score and reach the top of the leaderboards.
Hitman: Sniper is released as a premium title in the Playstore. If you liked Hitman: GO or just are a fan a Hitman movies, I’m sure it’ll be worth spending a few bucks to get this one as well. Check out the download link below and knock yourself out!
Have you played Hitman: Sniper? Let us know in the comments.
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Slack 2.0 redesign released with Material Design interface
Today, the popular team communication service, Slack, was updated to 2.0. The new update brings the Material Design UI to the masses, and also improves upon a whole boat-load of other smaller details that were frustrating when using the previous versions. For those who aren’t familiar with Slack, you should be. Well, if you do any online team work, that is.
Slack is THE go-to team communication service available today, and has been making quite a splash since it hit the scene last year. Being a part of a few different websites, we all use the Slack, which makes it nice for a one-stop shop for communications between the different teams. Slack also allows for many different integrations such as IFTTT and you can set up something of an in-app RSS feed thanks to the powers that Slack seems to hold within.
The Slack application was in dire need of a solid redesign. Not to say the previous version wasn’t a joy to use, but after poking around the 2.0 update, there was clearly a lot of differences that were found other than just UI changes. Of course, as I mentioned above, the biggest change is the redesign to follow the Material Design UI guidelines.
If you’re looking for the “official” change-log for Slack 2.0, here ya go:
- The left and right drawers have been dropped in favor a simpler tabbed navigation. Tabs provide quick access to all your channels, direct messages, starred items, and mentions.
- Know exactly where you want to go? Quickly “Jump to…” any channel, group, or direct message.
- Constantly switching between teams? Simply select your team from the top dropdown and off you go.
- A much refined notification experience, with notifications grouped by team.
- A shine new button floats attractively in the bottom right corner of the channels list for quickly locating or creating channels, DMs or groups.
- Search functionality has been greatly improved with the ability to open search results in a new “archive viewer” so you can see the full context of a message result.
Previously, Slack’s UI was based off of the slide-out drawers found on either the right hand, or left hand sides. This has been removed, and instead, you have a tabbed navigation layout. Once you’ve started Slack up, you will see a drop-down menu that allows you to switch between teams, or add a new team if need be. There is also a search button that you can use to search either specific messages or for specific files, which can come in really handy.
The ever-familiar overflow menu lets you access the remaining settings for the application. From this Settings panel, you have the ability to change your profile image, status, and general account info, specific to yourself. Also, you can set up which notifications you want to be pushed to your device, as well as toggle whether you want your device to Vibrate if a notification comes through.
As a side note, it must be mentioned about how much Slack lets you customize the notifications that come to your device. Especially if one of the teams that you are logged into, has a million different channels for different reasons. You don’t want your phone going off every, single, time something gets posted to a channel. Or you could just be like me, and have all the notifications and get irritated but don’t do anything to change it.
Now back to the Slack update. I stated that the new version features a tabbed design, compared to the slide-out drawers. As for those four tabs, you have your “Home”, “Messages”, “Mentions”, and “Starred”. The Home tab allows you to view both the read and unread channels, private and public, that can be found within whatever team you are a part of. Messages allows you to browse through your team-mates, find the person you need to send a PM to, and get typing away.
At the top of the Home and Messages tabs, there is a “Jump To” bar that allows you to quickly select between contacts or channels without having to scroll. Pretty much like a search function for those two tabbed sections.
Mentions shows you every time you were mentioned so that you can pin-point and catch up, if you’re part of a large group. Finally, the Starred section shows every message that you have every starred, which can help if you need to remember something, or if you just want to have quick-access to a gif.
When you’re on the main page of Slack, there is a Floating Action Button which when pressed, opens more options for you to act upon. You can quickly view all the channels within the team you are in and switch between with ease. There is also a Private groups option, as well as DMs. You can imagine what happens when you select one of those.
All I can really say is that if you are part of a team, and haven’t tried out Slack, you really need to get the person in charge to test it out. Slack is one of the best applications I have ever used, and it is really convenient to keep in touch with your team-mates. Plus, with the update to Slack 2.0, everything just got better, well at least for someone who loves a good design.
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Tag Heuer Carrera Wearable 01 named as first luxury smartwatch
Earlier this year, Tag Heuer and Intel announced that the two would collaborate on an Android Wear powered Swiss Smartwatch to be sold later this year. In an interview with Wearable, Jean-Claude Biver, CEO of Tag Heuer, has revealed the name of the company’s inbound Android Wear luxury smartwatch the Tag Heuer Carrera Wearable 01.
TAG Heuer Carrera Heuer 01
Although, Tag Heuer’s luxury smartwatch isn’t scheduled to be launched until October or November 2015, it is expected to follow a design similar to the company’s recently launched Carrera Heuer 01.
Quoting on the difference between an Intel Inside and a Swiss Made made watch, the CEO explained:
“There is no other choice for Tag Heuer than to have all its DNA, all its watchmaking emotion and flair into the connected watch. Somehow, one should not see from a certain distance the difference between a Carrera Heuer 01 and a Carrera Wearable 01.”
UK communications manager Alexandra King, also hinted that the smartwatch will be the first upgradeable Android Wear device.
The watch will change the technology as it develops, Jean-Claude Biver was clear about that. We want to be able to change the technology but keep the watch elements.Talking about the potential life span of the smartwatch, she said:
If your child completed their Masters degree, you might want to give them a watch. We want to create something that will stay on your watch for a lifetime, that’s what Tag Heuer does. And as the technology changes, it will change.
The Tag Heuer Carrera Wearable 01 is anticipated to be launched at $1400 with a 40 hour potential battery life.
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Samsung Galaxy S6 Active specs confirmed
A few hours ago, a render of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active leaked out and it went live on Samsung’s official website for a brief moment, after which it was taken down. It seems Samsung is ready to make an announcement anytime and is readying to send out the press release.
Unsurprisingly, the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active was listed with AT&T branding, complete with specs and manual. It features the same hardware as the Samsung Galaxy S6, the only difference being the rugged body of Galaxy S6 Active.
The model that was listed is SM-G890AZWAATT Samsung Galaxy S6 Active AT&T, Camo White color. It sports a 5.1-inch 2560 x 1440 Super AMOLED Quad HD display, weighing in at 138 grams having physical dimensions as 5.65″ x 2.78″ x 0.27″. The battery is 2550 mAh, debunking the earlier rumored 3,500 mAh unit.
Other specs like 3GB RAM, 32GB internal memory (non-expandable), an octa-core processor, 16 MP rear camera, a 5 MP front-facing camera and a heart rate monitor are common to both the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the S6 Active. It runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop, but we expect it to be upgraded to Android 5.1 soon after release.
Like its predecessor the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active, the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active is dust and water resistant but with an upgraded IP-68 certification, covering 1.5 meters of submersion for 30 minutes.
For those of us feeling a little adventurous on the weekends, it comes with a dedicated Active button in the top left of the device. It triggers the Activity Zone app which includes barometer, weather, compass, and S Health information. The button can also be customized to perform other functions, such as taking photos.
There is no word from Samsung or AT&T on the pricing or availability of this device but we should hear about it soon.
Are you looking forward to buy the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active? Let us know in the comments below.
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Huawei Anniversary Bundle Deals
To celebrate the first anniversary of their US website, smartphone giant Huawei is offering great deals on some of their products for a limited time period.
In the Huawei Anniversary Bundle Deals, they are offering a discount of $50 for buying any of these smartphones: Huawei P8 lite, Huawei Ascend Mate 2 and Huawei Snapto. That’s not all, they are also providing a Net10 SIM card along with a $50 airtime card that provides 30 days of unlimited* Nationwide Talk, Text and Data Plan with the first 3GB data at high speed (data at 64KBPS thereafter). Now, isn’t that great!
So, that’s a $100 discount, until now. Yes, there’s more! Huawei knows the music junkie inside all of us and has decided to throw in a free Huawei Bluetooth dual stereo speaker worth $99.99 with the purchase of one of the smartphones listed in the sale!
$200 worth of savings. What more could one want? Of course, you want more and Huawei knows it. If you buy their all new Huawei P8 lite smartphone, you get a free snap on cover to protect your phone from those little ‘accidents’.
This amazing offer is only on for 72 hours exclusively for registered email subscribers on GetHuawei.com. Time is running out guys. Go! go! go!
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The Android M Preview makes for a surprisingly usable daily driver
Late last week, I fired my up Mac’s Terminal, pecked out a few half-remembered commands, looked them up, typed them out more slowly and that was that. After a few moments of silent finger-crossing, I was the proud owner of a Nexus 6 running the Android M Developer Preview. I then did something I didn’t really expect to: I turned off my iPhone and made the snap decision to use Android M — unfinished as it is — as my main squeeze until Google I/O came to an end. The show’s long over by now, but I’ve still (mostly) left my iPhone off to see how this highly incomplete version of Android stands up in day-to day-use. And you know what? For something that’s very clearly a preview, it doesn’t make for a bad daily driver.
First things first (and this should go without saying): Don’t install the Android M preview and expect to see all the whiz-bang features from the keynote working in perfect harmony. They won’t, mostly. As was the case with the Android L preview from last year, this isn’t a build meant for wowing your iOS devotee friends. It’s about giving developers an early chance to hook their apps up to Google’s modified vision, so Android Pay, Direct Share and almost all the rest are nowhere to be found. The most crushing omission in my book is the lack of Now on Tap, a conceptually dead-simple feature that provides an informational Now card based on what you say or what’s on screen. I fell in love so hard with this feature that its absence is almost palpable — some might call it creepy, but I’m more than happy to let Google decide what I want before I can.
So what is there to pay attention to? Well, there’s a revamped app launcher, for one. Instead of the discrete cards displaying your apps you swiped through in Lollipop, you’re now left with a scrolling list with apps lumped together by name. The four apps you use most often live in an ever-changing top row that does a good job keeping up with your changing moods. The quick-launch bar also makes an appearance whenever you type something into the Google Search widget, although I can’t honestly remember the last time I needed to search for something online and jumped into one of those apps instead. If you dig into the developer settings, you’ll also find a System UI tuner that — for now — only lets you rearrange the Quick Settings slots that live above your notifications shade. Device makers like LG have let us fiddle with these little bits for ages now, and it’s nice to see Google take inspiration from what others have already done to Android. (You could also be a contrarian at look at this as Google cribbing notes from OEM innovation, but that’s a debate for another time.)
One of Android M’s other big draws is its much smarter take on app permissions — the days of agreeing to permissions before you’d even used an app are over, or at least they will be down the road. You’ll still have to sign off on a manifest of permissions requests, but you can jump into the Apps menu in the settings to manually disable certain permissions. Sorry Airbnb, you’re never touching my camera again. As you can see in the above screenshot, Android is going to nag you; after all, most of the applications you’ll try this trick on won’t play nice.
I left most of my apps well alone, but I spent more than enough time coming to grips with Google’s improved sound and notification controls. You see, in the days before Lollipop, you could crank your volume all the way into a vibration-only mode, and one more click would make the phone completely silent. Now, with M, that one last click brings you into a Do Not Disturb mode that you can play with from the Quick Settings shade. Android’s original implementation felt damned-near perfect, but M’s is a step in the right direction: More often than not I’d just leave things in Priority Only mode so I could filter everything but work messages.
Beyond all that lies mostly minor changes: Your lockscreen font is a hair thicker than it used to be, and swiping from the left corner of your locked phone’s screen brings up Google’s Now voice interface instead of the dialer. If M’s insistence on white interface elements is doing a number on your retinas, you can fire up a dark theme… but that only changes the way the settings menu appears.
Now, let’s take a moment to step beyond what’s new: How well does Android M as a package actually work? If you used the Android L preview as your daily driver right out of the gate last year, you were in for world of potential, unstable hurt. That’s not at all the case this time: My sacrificial Nexus 6 generally ran as well as it did before I started fiddling with it. Almost about all of my apps were peachy after re-install, though you’ll run into lagginess and force quits more frequently than before you took the plunge. Some users have reported that their 64GB Nexus 6s were only reporting 23GB of storage space, but you can apparently fix that with a spin in the command line. Just par for the course, chums.
Thing is, when M works well, it works really well, which makes those moments of computational confusion stand out even more. Case in point? My T-Mobile LTE connection worked like a charm, say, 90 percent of the time. There were a few puzzling moments when I’d see the cell signal indicator go completely dark and my connection would go dead even though I had full service just moments before. Sometimes a quick restart would coax the connection back to life, but more often than not I just had to wait for it to decide to work again. Oh, and once or twice while using the Nexus 6 as a mobile hotspot, I kept getting routed to Google Ireland whenever I tried searching for something — I still haven’t figured that one out. None of these issues have gotten to the point that I’d call them dealbreakers, but they’re probably just enough of a headache to keep novices away.
As I’ve mentioned, If you can scarcely wrap your head around a command line, you probably shouldn’t muck around with Android M yet. It’s far from finished, and it strips away the sort of polish you’d want out of a device you carry around on the regular. Here’s the kicker, though: If you don’t mind the occasional (and usually very temporary) headache, the Android M developer preview makes for a thoughtful, mostly stable day-to-day companion. When I first fired it up, I was more surprised at how whole it feels rather than how incomplete it actually is. Several days in, that feeling hasn’t disappeared.
Lollipop rolling out to the Sony Xperia Z3 on T-Mobile
We have got some great news for owners of T-Mobile Sony Xperia Z3 today. Last evening, Des Smith, T-Mobile’s senior product manager, tweeted that Android 5.0 Lollipop is set to roll out to the Sony Xperia Z3 as of Jun 3 midnight PDT.
Software Update: @TMobile #Z3 – #Lollipop + Band 12 support! Should start after Midnight Pacific ✌Des pic.twitter.com/766pvQpKsq
— Des (@askdes) June 2, 2015
Lollipop update brings with it the goodness of Material Design, heads up notifications, better battery life, new security features and many other awesomeness. Des also highlighted that this update will enable support for LTE Band 12. The LTE Band 12, running on the 700Mhz spectrum should allow Sony Xperia Z3 users to achieve a stronger signal, even indoors where the band is supported.
OTA updates do take some time to roll out to everybody, so just be patient. Hitting the update button won’t bring it sooner.
Have you received the OTA update? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Tell us what you love and what you don’t.
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AIVAnet 