Following the trend of innovative Email interfaces, Google on Wednesday announced a major redesign to its Gmail web interface. The Gmail update brings a new look that significantly cleans up and modernizes the user interface, and adds tabbed browsing of incoming messages to help users process email based on category. We get a lot of different types of email: messages from friends, social notifications, deals and offers, confirmations and receipts, and more. All of these emails can compete for our…
Samsung Unveils Prototype 13-inch 3200-by-1800 Notebook Display
Samsung announced Monday that it plans to unveil a prototype 13.3-inch notebook display with a resolution of 3,200-by–1,800 pixels. If mass produced, the display would give the Korean company’s clients, including its own computer division, significantly higher resolution than currently available on Apple’s Retina MacBook Pros or Google’s Chromebook Pixel. The current consumer notebook display density champion is the aforementioned Chromebook Pixel, which launched in February with a 2,560-by–1,700 resolution on a 12.85-inch display for a total of about 239…
Android Dominates, Windows Phone Surges in Q1 2013
Expanding on an April report that showed smartphones outselling feature phones worldwide for the first time, research firm IDC released a new look at global shipments and market share of smartphone operating systems. Top Worldwide Smartphone OS (Shipments in Millions) Source: IDC Q1 2013 Q1 2013 Market Share Q1 2012 Q1 2012 Market Share Year-Over-Year Change Android 162.1 75.0% 90.3 59.1% 79.5% iOS 37.4 17.3% 35.1 23.0% 6.6% Windows Phone 7.0 3.2% 3.0 2.0% 133.3% BlackBerry 6.3 2.9% 9.7 6.4%…
Google I/O 2013 Overview
Google held its annual I/O Conference today in San Francisco. The company made a number of major announcements related to its services, products, and Android. Here’s an overview of the latest news from Mountain View. Android Activations Google started the day with some positive news for Android. The free and open mobile OS has been activated on 900 million devices to date, and Android users have installed more than 48 billion apps. In comparison, Apple has sold over 500 million…
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Google Set to Unveil Spotify-Like Streaming Music Service at I/O
After months of speculation that Apple would soon launch a Pandora-like streaming music service, it now appears that Google will beat Apple to the market by launching its own streaming service, although the Mountain View company’s effort will be more akin to on-demand Spotify than it will be to a radio-like Pandora. Music industry sources speaking with The Verge this week indicated that Google would unveil the service at its I/O event today in San Francisco. The company reportedly has…
Android Dominates Q1 2013 with 74% of Smartphone Shipments
Samsung hardware and the Android mobile operating system dominated the first quarter of 2013, according to new data released Tuesday by research firm Gartner. The Korean electronics giant shipped 64.7 million smartphones during the quarter for 30.8 percent of worldwide market share while Google’s Android was found on 156 million devices shipped during the quarter, for a commanding 74.4 percent market share. Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, explained the results: There are two clear leaders in the OS…
Social Gaming Features Coming to Android with Google Play Games
Apple’s Game Center, the social iOS gaming service introduced as part of iOS 4.1 in September 2010, is about to get a doppelgänger in the form of “Google Play Games,” a new feature coming soon to Android. According to Android Police, which obtained an early build of the service, Google Play Games will likely feature syncing saved games between devices, shared game lobbies for chatting and matchmaking, invites and challenges, icon badges and notifications, score leaderboards, and achievements. The service…
Apple’s iPhone Widens Lead as Most-Owned U.S. Smartphone
Apple’s iPhone reached record high usage share in U.S. during the first quarter, according to the latest MobiLens survey from research firm comScore. The iPhone achieved 39 percent usage share among U.S. smartphone subscribers as of the end of March, up 2.7 percent from December 2012. U.S. Smartphone OEM Usage Share Source: comScore December 2012 March 2013 Point Change Apple 36.3% 39.0% 2.7 Samsung 21.0% 21.7% 0.7 HTC 10.2% 9.0% -1.2 Motorola 9.1% 8.5% -0.6 LG 7.1% 6.8% -0.3 Usage…
EFF Reveals “Who Has Your Back” In Online Privacy
Consumers should trust Twitter, Dropbox, and Google to safeguard their personal information from improper government inquiries, while customers of Apple, AT&T, Myspace, and Verizon should check the street to see if any unmarked government vehicles are parked outside, according to the annual “Who Has Your Back” report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the non-profit digital rights advocacy group. In an evaluation of 18 online firms, a surprising number of prominent companies were found to have few protections for user…
Microsoft Invades Android with ‘Switch to Windows Phone’ App
Although badly trailing iOS and Android in terms of market share, Microsoft’s Windows Phone mobile operating system often leads in terms of clever marketing. Microsoft just released a “Switch to Windows Phone” app for Android that works with a companion app on the Windows Phone Store to help users migrate from Android to Windows Phone 8. Users interested in switching from Android to Windows Phone can download the free app on their current Android device. With the user’s permission, the…