Review TechRadar: Phone and communications news 04-08-2013

TechRadar: Phone and communications news TechRadar UK latest feeds

Facebook Home leaks ahead of Friday rollout Apr 8th 2013, 12:58 Facebook Home is set to be launch on the Google Play store on April 12, but for those of you who really can't wait a second longer, a beta version has been leaked. The beta was published by MoDaCo, and interestingly the APK works on a range of Android handsets outside of those Facebook specified as compatible, which includes the Nexus 4 and the Nexus 7 tablet. The device does, however, need to have a maximum resolution of 1280x768 – and you need to be able to uninstall your current Facebook app too. There's a leak in our home As expected though, the beta leak does have limited functionality right now. Chat Heads isn't working, and as this is taken from a pre-release ROM, there are a few bugs in the mix. But the biggest thing we're learned here is that Facebook Home has the potential to be put on a lot more devices down the line, which is pretty interesting in itself. But be warned - for those interested in grabbing the beta, MoDaCo warns "you do so at your own risk". In Depth: Giving your Note II vids some va-va-voom Apr 8th 2013, 12:42 The fact that anyone with a Samsung GALAXY Note II has a full HD video recorder is impressive enough, but recording HD video isn't the extent of what you can expect to do on your S Pen toting smart phone – oh no! With its quad-core power and epic screen, the Samsung GALAXY Note II also makes for an incredibly capable movie studio. In this concise guide to getting your Samsung GALAXY Note II's videos looking a bit more "va-va-voom", we'll start off by talking you through the camera, all the various shooting modes and ways of getting the best raw footage. Then, we'll fill you in on a number of apps that will help turn your moving memories into vids that make you go wow Using the Samsung GALAXY Note II camcorder It's easy to start-up your Samsung GALAXY Note II's camcorder; all you have to do is activate the camera app, flip the screen to landscape orientation and flip the toggle in the top right or left, depending on the direction you rotate the device. Now, the red record button is all you'll need to press to start making your masterpiece. On the side of the screen you will see five icons. At the top is the camera switcher which toggles between your Samsung GALAXY Note II's front and rear camera. The rear camera may be the better of the two, able to shoot full HD 1080p video, but the front facing camera still boasts a very respectable resolution of 720p. The button below it is a video light toggle. Use this when you need to brighten up a low light scene. Underneath it sits an option to change recording modes. Here you can set your Note II to shoot slow motion and fast motion video, great for recording your kid's relay race frame-by-frame, or speeding up your pets for some home video hilarity. If you think that sounds like we're getting closer to the va-va-voom we were taking about earlier, wait until you tap the magic wand icon below. On top of allowing you to apply a range of filters to your video such as cold and warm vintage, black and white, sepia, solarize and posterize, it also includes a colour accent mode. This records everything in black and white other than one colour, perfect for making the boys in blue stand out when shooting the big game. Couple this with slow motion capture and you can make a simple goal movie shot on a phone look utterly spectacular. There are a few other settings that can be tweaked for anyone who wants to tinker by tapping the cog icon in the bottom left, but rather than go into too much detail, it's high time we moved onto some Samsung GALAXY Note II video editing apps. Samsung GALAXY Note II video apps Of course there are pre-installed applications on the Samsung GALAXY Note II to play back video, but anyone who wants to edit away, you'll need to dip into Samsung's Apps world or the Google Play Store. Video app 1: FxGuru Free The first app worth shouting about is called FxGuru. We could have started with something small, like an app that adds a soundtrack, filters or a simple overlay, but FxGuru is all about the big impact. FxGuru overlays full-on 3D graphics atop your recorded video. Don't be underwhelmed with our initial description though, with FxGuru you can choose between a satellite crash, a UFO arrival or an alien probe invading your screen and turning a run of the mill HD video clip into something all together earth-shattering. In its free form, you can access three overlays. If you share the app on Facebook, another overlay is made available and if you stump up the cash for the £5.99 expansion pack, you gain access to thirteen more FX for your viewing astonishment. Video app 2: Magisto Free What if you've got more than one video you want to pull together and turn into a handsome montage? The answer is simple – it's Magisto. The app has been described by one reviewer on Google's Play Store as "Like having your own little casting crew at work in your phone", and we can see why. Start up the app and you can choose from videos on your Note II, or record new videos. Once the choice videos are selected, Magisto prompts you to choose a theme. These can be retro and fun, soppy and sentimental or fast paced and fashionable. Each theme has around eight soundtracks for your montage masterpiece, and Magisto doesn't scrimp with stock sound bites you've never heard of. The retro theme on offer gives you legends such as Scott Joplin and Louis Armstrong to add pizzazz, and the Fashion theme takes things in an ultra current direction with the likes of Azalea Banks and Iconapop. Thanks to the Samsung GALAXY Note II's quad-core power, videos are processed nice and swiftly if you turn on hardware acceleration, and the results are engaging, look charming and are arranged in sync with the music of choice. Once you process your Magisto videos, uploading them to services like Facebook and YouTube won't cost you a penny. If you want to save your montage offline, then you'll need to pay a monthly or annual fee. Simple? We thought so too. Video app 3: GifBoom Free If this was a photo app round-up we'd probably include Instagram, but as it's all about videos, mentioning GifBoom is a no brainer. The app is considerably less full-on in terms of processing than the other two. In fact, it doesn't really make movies per se. Instead, you use your Samsung GALAXY Note II to generate utterly charming little GIFs. These are comprised of just thirty frames and can be shared on the GifBoom social media channel. The app is like Instagram in so far as it allows you to follow friends, with their 'Booms' populating your feed. The GIFs themselves are a lot of fun to create. Simply press on the shutter release in the GifBoom camera mode and you'll be recording. Press again to pause, and carry on recording your video from a different point of view. Once your thirty frames are captured, you can easily overlay a filter, speed up, loop and reverse your Boom. The GIFs are by default shared on GifBoom itself, but it's a doddle sending them over to Twitter and Facebook, and with GIFs being such universally accessible files, accessing them from a range of devices should be a walk in the park. So there you have it, whether you're in the mood for a motion picture styled special effect, musical movie montages or having a pop at creating your own BuzzFeed style GIF, we've hopefully added some va-va-voom to your Samsung GALAXY Note II videos. ---------- Also check out on Your Mobile Life: Working on the go made easy VIDEO: A Beginner's Guide to the Samsung GALAXY Note II Living with the Samsung Galaxy Note II Writers, designers and gamers: how the Note II brings innovation to the smartphone space Streamline your office with S Note and S Planner Related Stories BlackBerry R-series caught on camera Samsung infringes upon yet another key Apple patent, judge rules Nokia Lumia 928 handset breaks cover, is it the new flagship device? Embrace Creativity: Jonathan Erdman, the legal professional HTC One delay leads to lowest profits ever Is Google trying to buy WhatsApp? Apr 8th 2013, 10:39 Google's hunger for new acquisitions appears to remain unsatisfied as rumours surface that the company is looking to buy WhatsApp. WhatsApp, the popular cross-platform messaging app that has rapidly eclipsed text messaging as we know it, has been predicted as a big buy for some time. Now it looks like Google is the one circling a deal, if inside sources speaking to Digital Trends are to be believed. However, word is that the mobile messaging service is playing hard to get, demanding more than Google is currently offering - which is said to be around $1bn (£653m/AUS$963m). Chatterbox With Facebook finding its home on the HTC First, 2013 could prove to be a big year for the new age of messaging services, with bog standard text messaging beginning to feel like a thing of the past. And WhatsApp feels like a no-brainer for Google, which will most likely bring the service as an integrated part of Android in the future if a deal takes place. Rumours have been swirling that Google is looking to release an all-under-one-roof messaging service named Google Babble, so we'd expect to see WhatsApp play into that But if Google is to announce Babble at May's Google I/O developer conference, it might want to get this WhatsApp deal done and dusted post haste. We've contacted Google to ask if it can verify the rumours of this acquisition, and will update if we hear back. HTC One delay leads to lowest profits ever Apr 8th 2013, 09:22 The HTC One might be our favourite mobile phone in the world right now, but it hasn't been so good for its manufacturer. Thanks to delays in production of the handset, HTC's financial results for Q1 2013 are its lowest of all time. The One was supposed to be available in 80 countries before the end of March, which would have put it ahead of Samsung's looming Galaxy S4. Instead, it was available in just three, and now - despite HTC just unravelling its Facebook phone, the HTC First - the company is feeling the burn. HTC Want The company brought in a first quarter net income of 85m Taiwanese dollars (US$2.85m, £1.85m, AUS$2.72m) - a 98 per cent plummet and the lowest on record since HTC started reporting its quarterly profits in 2004. Yowza. But this comes after months of bad news for HTC, which has been in a period of market share decline. All hope was pinned on the One to drag the company back to more positive realms. The reason for HTC's less-than-speedy delivery of its phone is said to be a shortage of camera components. Let's hope that with the One and the First both on their way, HTC can see a reversal of fortunes. Related Stories BlackBerry R-series caught on camera Samsung infringes upon yet another key Apple patent, judge rules Nokia Lumia 928 handset breaks cover, is it the new flagship device? Embrace Creativity: Jonathan Erdman, the legal professional In Depth: Giving your Note II vids some va-va-voom Blip: iOS 7 concept artist wants widgets Apr 8th 2013, 02:37 A dilligent designer has mocked up a video showing how he'd like iOS to work on his iPhone and iPad, with features like Android-style widgets on the top of his must have list. Frederico Bianco has created quite a detailed breakdown of his vision for iOS 7, not just of what the features should be, but of how they should work, too. As you might expect, a number of the features Bianco wants are some of the best ideas found on Android phones. He wants to be able to launch apps from the Lock Screen, for example, and he wants to access certain apps through widgets, rather than having to launch the apps themselves. One of his better ideas is for a new app called Shelf. This would be a repository for all of the webpages you select to read later, with a two-step process for adding them through the Safari browser. Take a look at Bianco's video for yourself and let us know which of his ideas you love, and which are completely bonkers. Via Mashable YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JdW4qNeFkBk#! Blips are TechRadar's new news nuggets that you'll find percolating through the homepage - or you can see them all by hitting the blip keyword below. Blip: Google internally testing new Play Store design Apr 8th 2013, 01:06 A Google Plus misfire from a quick-fingered Googler has revealed the next major redesign for the Play Store on Android devices. A post from YouTube employee Eileen Rivera (since removed) included the image of the new Play Store, which is apparently in the "dogfooding" stage of development -- where Google "feeds" its own staff the next flavour of the app for testing. In a cute reference to this, the Play Store app icon has been changed to a dog's bowl with Play services icons mixed up in the slop. The image gives very little away as to what new features or usability tweaks we can expect in the update, though. We're hoping for more detailed search options, with filters to improve results, but then, we've been hoping for a change like this for a while now. Via Ausdroid Blips are TechRadar's new news nuggets that you'll find percolating through the homepage - or you can see them all by hitting the blip keyword below. Related Stories BlackBerry pulls the plug on BBM Music Blip: Most time on smartphones spent playing games Embrace Creativity: Jonathan Erdman, the legal professional Apr 7th 2013, 23:01 Whoever you are, whatever you do, be passionate with the unbeatable on-the-go creativity of the Samsung GALAXY Note II. Mobile has moved on. Smartphones aren't just about apps, internet and multimedia; today's big-screen, high-power superphones are places where your ideas are captured, your life planned and your creativity realised. Samsung's multi-faceted GALAXY Note II, with its S Pen tech and Multi Window versatility, embodies this concept and its real-world. Plugged into work, wherever you are YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvWbd1pObO8 Jonathan works in law, a frantic environment where a crucial deadline is always crashing into view, and organisation is key. He needs to be plugged into his latest cases at all times, whether in or out the office, and so mobile connectivity is essential. He says: "It's a high-pressure environment. Accurate delivery of information to and from me is indispensable. The quicker it can happen, the better." Taking a client call on his headphones, Jonathan is also able to check a related memo as it appears in his inbox. While still on the call he's able to edit the memo on the 16:9 widescreen and send the updated information to the relevant legal departments. It means information is captured, agreed and delivered within a few minutes, rather than hours. On his way to an office meeting, Jonathan receives an email to say an immediate external visit is required. He uses the GALAXY Note II's Multi Window feature to simultaneously recheck the email and consult a map for directions. He also updates his shared calendar to alert colleagues of the new plan. "Making sure your team are informed of last-minute changes is crucial," says Jonathan. "However, keeping tabs of your personal life amidst the chaos is also a skill..." Case in point: today is Jonathan's girlfriend's birthday. On the return leg from the client meeting, he makes a digital birthday card in S Note and dispatches it to his girlfriend. He uses the phone's fast browser to check for the nearest florist on his way home, stopping off to pick up a bunch of roses. As Jonathan concludes: "It's a great device for keeping my work and home life in order. The widescreen fits so much information on it, which is great for multi-tasking." Related Stories BlackBerry R-series caught on camera Samsung infringes upon yet another key Apple patent, judge rules Nokia Lumia 928 handset breaks cover, is it the new flagship device? HTC One delay leads to lowest profits ever In Depth: Giving your Note II vids some va-va-voom Nokia Lumia 928 handset breaks cover, is it the new flagship device? Apr 7th 2013, 15:51 The Nokia Lumia 928, reported to be the company's next top shelf Windows Phone device has emerged in purported press shots leaked online. The device, which is rumoured to be a thinner and lighter version of the Nokia Lumia 920 device, has appeared thanks to serial tech leak artist @evleaks. The handset is branded with the Verizon Wireless US network, which suggests it'll be a counter to the Nokia Lumia 920, which is an AT&T exclusive in the country. Previous rumours had suggested the device will launch on Verizon in April, but what isn't clear is whether Nokia will bestow the device upon Windows Phone fans in other territories. Similar internals Previous speculation had suggested that the Lumia 928 will bring a xenon flash to complement the 8-megapixel PureView camera. Other internal features are expected to remain the same as the Lumia 920, while initial reports that the device would tout an aluminium body were soon rebuked. Related Stories BlackBerry R-series caught on camera Samsung infringes upon yet another key Apple patent, judge rules Embrace Creativity: Jonathan Erdman, the legal professional HTC One delay leads to lowest profits ever In Depth: Giving your Note II vids some va-va-voom Samsung infringes upon yet another key Apple patent, judge rules Apr 7th 2013, 15:23 Samsung's line of Galaxy, Nexus and Transform devices infringe upon part of a key Apple parent, relating to the selection of text in iOS devices, a judge has ruled. In preliminary findings, the International Trade Commission judge said Samsung was in violation of the patent entitled "Method and apparatus for providing translucent images on a computer display." Specifically, the offence relates to the translucent bubble that appears over the top of text when it is selected by the user within the web browser and in other apps. The ruling was made on March 26 and only made public on Friday, but if the decision is upheld, the offending devices could face an import ban into the United States. Final decision coming soon The judge Thomas J. Pender also ruled that Samsung had not infringed on a patent which covers how the devices recognise a microphone plugged into the headphone jack. A final ruling is expected in August. Related Stories BlackBerry R-series caught on camera Nokia Lumia 928 handset breaks cover, is it the new flagship device? Embrace Creativity: Jonathan Erdman, the legal professional HTC One delay leads to lowest profits ever In Depth: Giving your Note II vids some va-va-voom Facebook looks to calm Facebook Home privacy concerns Apr 7th 2013, 14:59 The Facebook Home service will collect information about non-Facebook notifications and the applications users are opening, the company wrote in a blog post aimed at easing privacy concerns. In Friday's post on the Newsroom blog, the company moved to assure users that their Facebook privacy settings will not be altered by the new custom Android UI, following vocal post-launch concerns. In a Q&A style post, Facebook said Home's privacy controls are no different from the Android app and users' current privacy settings will be carried over when they download the new custom skin. It also re-affirmed that users can ditch Facebook Home after the installation, simply by turning it off in the app's settings. So far, so good, right? App launcher data However, If users don't want Facebook knowing which other apps they're using on their phone, Home most definitely is not for them. Home will collect data about the apps users are opening from its new Android launcher, but will not log information about what's going on within those apps. The post wrote: "Home will only see how you interact with Home itself. For example, Facebook could see that you launched a map application using the app launcher, but Facebook would not receive information about what directions you searched for or any other activity within the app itself. "Of course, some apps already are Facebook-enabled so that you can share your activity within the app back to Facebook. This kind of integration existed long before we launched Home, and apps that have it will tell you if it is available." Non-Facebook notifications For handsets with Home pre-installed on the device, like the HTC First, the service will also collect data about which apps users are receiving notifications from, which it says will improve the service. The post added: "For devices that come with Home preinstalled, Home can display system notifications, meaning that it will show notifications from apps on your phone. "Since these notifications appear in Home, Facebook collects information about the notification (such as which app is generating them) but not the content of the notification itself. We remove identifying information from this data after 90 days." The company said location services act no differently in Home as they do in the regular Android app. So while Facebook Home isn't drinking down every activity on users' handsets, there are valid concerns for folks that don't want Facebook knowing more than it already does.

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