| ZTE-manufactured Sprint Vital hits stores on June 14 Jun 10th 2013, 20:03 
Have a hankering for an Android-equipped handset with a spacious display that doesn't require smashing open the piggy bank? Sprint's latest LTE smartphone may be just what you seek. Sprint today announced a new budget-priced Android smartphone will be touching down in stores this week in the guise of the Vital. Powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor with Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, the Sprint Vital hails from Chinese manufacturer ZTE, although the device is being strictly branded as a carrier-exclusive device. First teased with a spec leak last week, on paper the Sprint Vital appears to be a quite capable performer, with a five-inch 720p HD IPS display and 13MP rear camera with LED flash. Geared for gamersSprint is marketing the Vital as a device ready-made for gamers, with a 2500 mAh removable Lithium-ion battery that promises up to 15 hours of talk time. The Vital comes preloaded with EA Mobile's Real Racing 3, which features 45 "meticulously detailed" cars from high-end automakers such as Porsche and Lamborghini, which race on officially licensed tracks. Google Play is also included for downloading plenty of other games, and preloaded apps include Sprint ID and Sprint Zone for keeping track of your account while on the go. Sprint Vital arrives Friday, June 14 at retail as well as all of the company's sales channels, priced at $99.99 with a two-year service agreement after a $50 mail-in rebate in the form of an American Express Prepaid Reward Card.     |  | Gary Marshall: "Can't innovate any more, my ass" Jun 10th 2013, 19:43 
In the late 1990s I became quite obsessed with a brilliant wee program called WindowBlinds, which enabled you to replace the Windows UI with whatever you wanted. My PC spent some time being a Mac, and being a BeOS box, and being a made-up machine from the future - but for all my fiddling I couldn't change the important thing: it's not how a product looks that matters, but how it works. WindowBlinds could change the former, but not the latter. I was reminded of WindowBlinds today when I watched Apple's WWDC 2013 keynote presentation. On the face of it, iOS 7 looks like a reskin, but there's much more to it than that. Apple has done more than change the colours around and strip the shininess from the app icons. It's clearly informed by WebOS, Android, Windows Phone and the jailbreakers, but Jonathan Ive is no magpie swooping around to steal anything shiny he sees. The iOS team has clearly sweated the small stuff to produce something that isn't just pretty to look at, but that's genuinely going to make iOS nicer and more fun to use. iOS 7 rings my "want it!" bell, as did the new MacBook Air, the terribly-named OS X Mavericks and the new and no doubt hilariously expensive Mac Pro. Keynotes can be pretty tedious things, but bar the stomach-churning demo fail at the beginning - and I do wonder why a developer got to show off robot toy cars, no matter how clever, at all - this one was mainly killer and very little filler. Still doomed, obviouslyBack in April I wrote about the flurry of Apple Is Doomed stories, and argued that "claiming that Apple doesn't have anything in the pipeline is even more ridiculous. There were six years between the iPod and iPhone. We're supposed to write off Apple because it's been a whole six months since the iPad mini?" One month later there's a brand new and completely unexpected-looking Mac Pro (wags have already dubbed it the iBin and the Tube), a whole new version of iOS, a new version of OS X, Haswell MacBook Airs, a music discovery app, iWork for iCloud, new versions of iWork (for the desktop) and iOS for cars. As Phil Schiller put it: "Can't innovate any more my ass." What was interesting about the keynote wasn't just the products or Apple's obvious confidence, though. The politics were interesting too. Android received plenty of kickings, but with the exception of the inevitable Windows 8 dig Microsoft escaped relatively unscathed - and when Tim Cook unleashed Tim's World of Numbers as he so loves to do, the numbers were used to hammer Google, not Microsoft. By an amazing coincidence, Apple's partner for Siri's web search results turned out to be not Google, but Bing. I might be reading too much into things, but I felt that Apple's relationship with Facebook showed signs of cooling too. It won't silence the doomsayers, but I reckon this keynote offered everything. We had products. We had politics. We even have a mystery to solve, because all the iOS 7 demos ran on iPhones, but not on iPads. What's Apple hiding?   | | Updated: iOS 7 unveiled with stripped back design...but looks rather familiar Jun 10th 2013, 18:50 
Apple has taken to the stage in San Francisco at its annual WWDC event to announce the next iteration of its mobile platform dubbed iOS 7. Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, branded iOS 7 "the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone", which shows you just how important this update is to the company. Taking over from iOS 6, the new software will find its way onto iPod, iPhone and iPad devices bringing with it the biggest design overhaul since its conception in 2007 - a change which has been led by Apple stalwart Sir Jony Ive. It overhauls the icons, as we saw earlier today, but also offers new elements like transparency throughout the apps, meaning you can see images slide up behind heading and keyboards, giving a more unified feel. It may be a shock to the system for dedicated Apple users who have become accustomed to the way iOS looks and works, but it's a revamp that the aging system desperately needed. The new platform brings not only a visual makeover, but also offers a host of new features too. Control Center is one of the big ones; swiping up from anywhere on your iPhone or iPad will bring up the new hub for loads of control throughout the device. This means you can control music, screen brightness, turning off the radios and even flicking on the flashlight for when you need to stalk around a house in the dark. Airdrop is also now available, allowing you to share anything from an app that supports Share Sheet, with a quick tap showing up the friends that are nearby - with Apple claiming that there's 'No need to wander around the room bumping your phone with others.' 
Safari has gained something of an update, with the same visual overhaul coming to the browser to allow dynamic resizing of the URL bar, giving you more space to see what's on the screen, as well as allowing you to slide back and forth through your browser history. One cool feature is the updated bookmarks element, which sits on the start screen of the iDevice, and collates links posted through your Twitter friends in one place for easier information discovery. The Tab system has been updated visually too - you no longer are limited to eight tabs open, as the new 3D rendering will allow you practically limitless tabs open at once, which will massively upset those that just love neatness. It will allow iOS 7 to compete with Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry in the coming years. 
The camera app has been given a little bit of an overhaul with a simplier, swipe-friendly interface which has a few more options than on iOS 6. With iOS 7 you can choose from various lens shapes including square, circle and panorama, while live photo filters let you see what your subject will look like in a multitude of effects before you even hit the shutter key. Viewing your photos has also been given a Jony Ive finish, with iOS 7 automatically arranging pictures by location into groups, which Apple is calling "moments". Pinch to zoom out and the Photo app will re-draw your photo library into collections, which will recognise a day trip or recent holiday and group all the pictures from that event into one block. 
Zoom out once more and you get a year overview off all the images in your album, with locations tags to remind you where you were each year. Hold your finger over the thumbnails to see an exploded view of each individual image, and release your finger on the one you wish to view full screen. Apple has also added an easier photo editor to the Photo app in iOS 7 with a range of filters and colour effects, such as black and white, which can be applied to a snap. 
Fan-boy favourite Siri hasn't been left out with a fancy new interface and, wait for it, new voices! Huzzah! You can now choose from male or female while the French and German languages have also been added, with more promised "over time". There are a range of new commands for Siri in iOS 7 too, such as "play my last voicemail", "turn on Bluetooth" and "increase my brightness". The likes of Twitter, Wikipedia and Bing search results have all been integrated into Siri, and Apple promises there's even more to come from our personal assistance in iOS 7 - it just ran out of time to show us at WWDC. 
iOS 7 allows car manufacturers to integrate the operating system with built-in screens in vehicles, as well as full Siri support for eyes-free usage. Cars will be able to read your iMessages to you and allow you to dictate a response, as well as use other features such as Maps and the music player. If you have a hankering to get hold of one of these iOS 7 enabled cars then you'll have to wait until next year when 12 manufacturers will produce compatible vehicles. 
There's an all new look for the famous App Store, which we found out earlier now has over 900,000 apps, making it easier to find apps. You can search for apps based on age range in iOS 7 which Apple is pushing as a great feature for parents, while the 'Apps near me' feature will show you the most popular apps based on your current location. Finally, and this is something which will probably please a huge amount of the Apple fan-base, is the feature that apps will now update automatically in the background. 
Music is obviously a big thing over at Apple and the Cupertino-based firm reckons the player it's stuck in iOS 7 is "the best music player we have ever done". Instead of showing just the music stored on your iDevice, the Music app on iOS 7 also adds in your library stored on iCloud, allowing you to view all your tracks in one place. Turn your iPhone to landscape mode and a wall of album art tiles appear which you can slide sideways through, and tapping on one will zoom you into that album.     | | Blip: App store celebrates 900,000 apps ahead of fifth birthday Jun 10th 2013, 17:31 
Apple has announced on stage at WWDC that it now has over 900,000 applications in its App Store, throwing down the gauntlet to its fierce rival Google, which at last count was around the 800,000 mark in Google Play. An area where the App Store really does excel is in tablet-only apps, with Apple revealing it now has 375,000 applications dedicated to the iPad. The Cupertino-based firm also made time on stage to gleefully announce that it has paid out over $10 billion (around $6.5 billion, AU$10.5 billion) to developers, $5 billion of that in the last 12 months - and its payout is almost three times that of all other platforms combined (74 per cent compared to Androids 20 and "others" at 6). More blips!With all this excitement why not check out more of our lovely blips!     | | In Depth: Guide to the Samsung GALAXY S4 camera Jun 10th 2013, 15:26 
A rich photography heritage has shaped the Samsung GALAXY S4 camera, with its 13-megapixel sensor, wide-open f/2.2 lens and all its smart shooting modes. Samsung's compact camera range made front-facing screens and touch interfaces the norm. The high-spec NX range couples a DSLR APSC sensor with a smaller form factor and interchangeable lenses. For anyone looking for something in between, the mind-boggling Samsung EX2F is loaded with an astounding f/1.4 lens coupled with the form factor of a compact. With its experience innovating across the board, it's little surprise that Samsung's GALAXY S4 introduces plenty of new features and shooting modes to push your pictures to the next level Dual Shot
With the Samsung GALAXY S4 camera being such a high-res, powerful picture taker, S4 owners tend to be the designated picture takers at a party. Sadly though, there's the age-old party snapshot issue: photographers are seldom in photographs and almost never in their own. Dual Shot is Samsung's solution to that problem. By simultaneously taking a picture with both the front and rear-facing cameras, the S4 takes a cool snapshot of the subject and the photographer at the same time. 
The result is a picture within a picture: perfect not only for get-togethers but also for a proud parent who wants to show off the situation from all angles, a pet owner cooing over his or her kitty, or any situation where there's more than one side to the story. Drama Shot
Movement is incredibly difficult to capture in a photograph. Even if you're a professional using a manual camera, the results are often horribly blurred or unrealistically crisp. That's why Samsung has introduced Drama Shot: a whole new way of thinking about movement within a single still photograph. By taking multiple images and stitching them together, Drama Shot turns a photo into a study of movement, with a static background, and multiple images of the moving subject at various stages of its journey. The results are ideal for capturing dance, sports or active day-to-day situations and, best of all, it's completely automated, making it a piece of cake to use. Animated PhotoYouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6elb3U_zJEAnyone who's surfed the web in the past year has probably encountered the craze for animated GIFs (if somehow you haven't, there's a whole load of them here). But did you know you can easily create GIFs on your Samsung GALAXY S4? How? Animated Photo, that's how. Just tap the Mode button in the bottom right hand corner of the S4's camera interface, then select Animated Photo. In the next screen, you can record a short clip. What makes Animated Photo more versatile than just any clip creating tool is that you can choose which portion of the screen to animate and which to keep eerily still. Once you've filmed your clip, simply rub your finger over the area you want to bring to life, and the remainder will stay static. The result is an eye-catching GIF file that plays motion against static photography with fascinating, funny or even freaky results. Story Album
The interesting thing about phones with incredible cameras is that the photos you take on them tend to stay on them. Sure, some make their way to Facebook, and others to Dropbox. Some might even get printed out. But the vast majority remain on your phone, and now Samsung lets you take these photos further. Story Album is an auto desktop publishing app that curates your event photos, turning them into a smart photo album. With themes and a degree of manual control, you can easily find the perfect layout for your pictures, whether they were taken on holiday in the sun, at home with family, or at a wedding with friends. Once curated and collated, your Story Album can be enjoyed on-screen, or printed out as a beautiful, professional-quality photo book using Blurb's offline photo album service. Sound & ShotYouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAEgmeiDbJoIf a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture with sound must be worth twice as much! That might not have been the exact trail of thought going through Samsung's mind when it created Sound & Shot, but it works for us. How does Samsung's Sound & Shot work? By giving you the option to record nine seconds of audio either before you shoot or as soon as you take a picture. This means a photo of a London telephone box can convey the hustle and bustle of the city, a party picture can save that rousing chorus of happy birthday, and a concert shot can transport you back to the moment you took the photo with a burst of that encore that got you all dancing. You can even share your Sound & Shot photos with other GALAXY S4s, without the large file-sizes commonly associated with video. ConclusionSo there you have it: Dual Shot, capturing the scene from all angles; Drama Shot, documenting movement with ease; Animated Photo, creating moving pictures; Story Album, curating and collating your events into an album; and Sound & Shot, enriching your images with sound. While you're trying out these shooting modes, make sure you check out some of the other great camera features on the GALAXY S4, such as Rich Tone for high contrast scenes and Best Face for perfect group shots.   | | Apple, Xbox One and PS4 all make it a Magnificent Monday Jun 10th 2013, 11:02 
A few times a year we are lucky enough to get a night in tech that make everybody sit up and notice - traditionally they include Apple's iPhone and iPad launches and Samsung's Galaxy S announcements. But on this Magnificent Monday we are getting not two but three major reveals from a triumvirate of the world's tech leviathans, and we couldn't be more excited. In the San Francisco corner of this tech super slam is Apple - its WWDC 2013 keynote promised some major announcements. Not only are we expecting to see the latest version of its operating system for iPhone and iPad, a redesigned and overhauled iOS 7, we also expect a look at Mac's OS X update, OS X 10.9, and potentially new Macbook Pros and Mac Pros. 
But the headliner may well prove to be a new service - with the much vaunted iRadio arriving to bring's Apple's music offering into an era where Spotify and Pandora have begun to eat into the old hand iTunes. - Keep up with all the WWDC 2013 announcements from Apple
Even as Apple is announcing its latest kit, the tech world's attention will be flitting over to Las Vegas and the E3 2013 keynote from Microsoft which kicks off at 9.30am PT / 5.30pm BST / 2.30am AEST. We're hoping the event will reveal much, much more about what the Xbox One will be bringing to our living rooms. 
The focus, after what can only be described as vitriolic response to the tech- and services-heavy Xbox One reveal, will thankfully be on gaming and what titles will be vying to attract the world to the Microsoft gaming world. - Read all the latest on the Xbox One E3 announcements, or check out everything we know about Xbox One
A few hours later at 6pm PT / 2am BST / 11am AEST, we'll see what Sony has got up its sleeve as we get our first proper glimpse at the PS4. In what proved to be the complete opposite of Microsoft's approach, Sony gave us a lot of gaming glimpses when it announced the PS4 but very little hardware. 
In fact, in what has to be one of the most bizarre steps in recent tech history, Sony decided to keep the actual console out of sight, showing us the controller but not the box that will be sat under our television. Poor old Nintendo's Wii U will not be a part of Magnificent Monday, so we will not get the chance to compare all three of the big guns, but given the lack of impact from the Japanese giant's latest offering it's probably better that its on its own on Tepid Tech Tuesday where at least it gets a chance to have an impact. With a bit of luck this will be a date that offers up some new innovations that will still be meaningful in the tech world in five year's time. Until the announcements are made we're not really going to know which of Magnificent Monday's big three bags itself the most headlines, but the anticipation is a big part of the fun.   | |
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