Samsung Galaxy S4 Mega pops up in Samsung WatchON update description
The description of an update for the Samsung Watch ON app in the Google Play Store suggests the company is working on a new addition to the Galaxy S4 family – the Galaxy S4 Mega.
As you can see in the excerpt in the screenshot above, the Galaxy S4 Mega is put next to the Galaxy S4 mini and the Galaxy S4 Active (those are also not officially announced by Samsung). As you’d imagine, the description doesn’t unveil much more.
With Samsung’s Mega line-up consisting of the Mega 5.8 and Mega 6.3, it’s safe to assume the Galaxy S4 Mega would feature a display in the 5 to 5.8 inches spectrum.
On the other hand, the screenshot could easily be faked (the last line is now gone from the official description), so here it is for you to judge its authenticity.
Letterpress, a new game for iOS from the creator of Tweetie
If you’ve used the Twitter client Tweetie or the official Twitter apps for iOS, Android and OS X, you have one person to thank for them: Loren Brichter. Brichter rose to fame with his excellent Twitter app, Tweetie, for iOS and Android. These apps were so good that Twitter acquired him and his apps and since then he made the Twitter apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and OS X.
Last year, Brichter left Twitter to continue working for his own company, Atebits. He has been secretly working on his own app since then and yesterday it was finally released on iOS. Say hello to Letterpress.
Letterpress is a two player, online multiplayer game similar to Scrabble, where you have a grid of 5×5 tiles consisting of letters. Your goal is to form words using these letters. The word should have at least two characters and you cannot repeat words. Once you select your letters, they get assigned by your team color. The opponent then has to do the same.
If you choose from the white tiles, that is those that have not been used, you get one point per tile. If you steal tiles from your opponent, you get one point and the opponent loses one point per tile. Once stolen, the tiles turn the color of your side. If you use your own previously used tiles, you don’t get any points. Eventually, you have to use up all the tiles on the board and the one with the highest score wins.
The premise is pretty simple but despite that the game is fun to play. What I really like about this game is how well made it is. From the UI design to the slick animations, everything is top-notch and shows that a great deal of care went into making the game.
Now here’s the best part: Letterpress is completely free for download. There is an upgrade option for which you have to pay $0.99. which lets you use various themes for the board and you can also play multiple games at the same time but even without upgrading the game feels complete.
Click here to download the game on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. You’ll need a Game Center ID to play the game.
It seems that Google are wasting no time in getting the development kit for the latest version of Android into the hands of developers.
Less than a month after Android 4.1 was announced at Google I/O, the new SDK allows developers to optimize their applications with a wide variety of new features.
Among the things Google have warned developers to look out for is taking care when optimizing a particular application to work with the larger 7 inch screen size, such as the one found on the Nexus 7.
The Google devs also urge application developers to start taking advantage of the new richer notification styles introduced in JB, as well hardware accelerated rendering to take advantage of the new framerate optimizations.
For more info on developing for Android 4.1, check out Android Developers. Meanwhile, the new SDK can be downloaded from here.
Nokia launches Shoot & Tag beta app to help you navigate through painfully long videos
Today another interesting application makes its debut at Nokia Beta Labs. The app in question is called Shoot & Tag. It does its job while you’re shooting video, detecting changes or shifts in the background and the overall scene. Ultimately, it automatically creates a new scene or a chapter for each change.
The tags/scenes it creates are stored on the left side of the screen. Then, when you click them, you go directly to the corresponding section of the video.
It is particularly useful when you film a long video and want to quickly navigate through it. What’s also neat is that you don’t have to rely on Nokia’s algorithm and you can insert tags yourself with a tap on the screen.
Here’s an official video from Nokia demonstrating the powers of the application.
Do you remember Clear for the iPhone? The innovative app for creating to-do lists and managing tasks was made available on the Apple AppStore yesterday and our hands were itching to give it a spin.
The idea behind Clear is simple – easy to-do lists creation. And it does it effortlessly, while relying on an effective, intuitive one-of-a-kind user interface. And that’s a rare thing even in today’s app-filled mobile world.
Developed by Realmac Software, Clear says “No!” to trivial mobile app looks and embraces a sleek, minimalist design controlled mainly by common gestures like swipe and pinch.
Clear is built upon three main levels of operation. On the top level view you have the apps options and a shortcut to your lists. As options go, Clear isn’t going to win any prizes with its three different settings. No syncing, no exporting.
The second level or layer contains all your different task lists like “Personal”, “Shopping”, “Work”, etc. To create a new one, just tap on a blank part of the screen and it automatically creates a new list and prompts you to give it a name.
Now we are in the most interesting aspect of the app – managing tasks. Adding task happens in one of two ways – with a pinch out or by swiping to the bottom. Then the app urges you to give the task a name and that’s about the only thing you can do with it. No calendar, no fine details, no nothing – just straight-to-the-point text limited to 28 characters.
By giving you only the basic, the Clear app wants you to focus on the tasks instead on the apps itself. For some it will be the best thing since sliced bread, for others – not so much. Depends on what you’ll be using it for.
Once you’ve created a couple of tasks, they get colored in red, orange or dark yellow depending on their priority. The more recent goes to the top automatically but you can freely rearrange them. You can change the task’s location within the list its in with a tap-and-hold.
With a swipe on a task to the right it gets marked as checked and colored with a green background and strike-through text. This whole animation is accompanied by a subtle sound, which makes the experience even more delightful. To delete an item, just swipe it to the left.
To refresh the tasks in a list, just do a swipe up. And if you want to go up to the list view, just pinch out and the tasks screen will fold to reveal the list view. Neat.
Now, sit back, relax and watch out video overview of the Clear app in action.
All this is fine and dandy if you get used to the gestures and if you can live with the absolute basic functionality any task manager app can offer. It is as if the great user interface comes at the price of more robust settings and extras like syncing with popular online services.
I hope that the app developers would consider porting this fine piece of software to Android so that even more people can enjoy its great user interface. Speaking of wishes, it’d be great if Clear’s team implements some kind of syncing and/or exporting. Plus, one or two more bells and whistles would make my heart warmer, too.
The sequel to the highly popular game Draw Something is now available for download. The game is currently available only on the App Store and for the iPhone and iPod touch. You can either go for the free version with ads or the premium version for $2.99.
For those who are not aware, Draw Something is a game where you are given a word and you have to draw it on the screen using the various tools available to you. Your opponent then has to guess the drawing and name the word using the letters available to them.
The game had reached significant popularity a while back and it was hard not to come across someone scribbling or drawing something on the screen for a while. The popularity has waned in the recent past but should go right back up with the release of the new version.
Draw Something 2 brings new features such as new tools, patterns, stamps and colors, a new Instagram-like Gallery mode for others to showcase your drawings to others (which would previously get lost once the game ended) and over 5,000 new words have been added.
It’s a shame the game is only available on iOS for now but if you have an iPhone or iPod touch you can download it from the links below.
Alleged Motorola X shows up in GFXBenchmark scores, runs Android 4.2.2 on Snapdragon 600 chipset
With Google I/O getting close (it kicks off in just two days) we were bound to see Motorola X rumors heat up. A device claiming to be it surfaced in GFXBenchmark scores as Motorola XT1058 (supposedly AT&T’s version of the Motorola X).
The X phone already showed up in AnTuTu scores, showing an uninspiring result for a 1.5GHz processor. The device that ran the GFXBenchmark, however, had its CPU clocked at 1.7GHz. The OS version is also different – this one was running standard Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, while the one that ran AnTuTu reported Android 5.0.1.
The GPU is Adreno 320, which combined with the CPU clock speed makes it quite likely that this was a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset (not 800 as the rumors claim).
Anyway, GFXBenchmark confirms the 720p screen (according to rumors 4.7″ big) with on-screen controls.
Take all this info with a healthy dose of skepticism – the shortened Google I/O keynote might not leave enough time to announce a new Nexus phone (especially the first entirely designed by Google-owned Motorola) and the conflicting info makes the Motorola X rumors even fishier.
There was some talk that Motorola X will be a brand rather than a specific device, which would explain why we’re seeing different specs, but again, have your salt at the ready.
