Last month, Google announced it would be 'rebranding' its Drive suite of office applications for Android, but at the time gave no indication as to how it intended to do so. Earlier today, the company released two of three new standalone applications — one for Docs, the other for Sheets, and stated the third, entitled
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After disrupting the market with the Moto G and Moto X last year, Motorola is all set to announce its first smartphone this year. The company has sent out invites for an event to be held on May 13th in London. Don't get all excited about a Moto X successor though. The invite image states
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For the past several months, there have been some pretty intense rumors surrounding the possibility of Sprint buying out T-Mobile. Sprint has publicly stated that they'd like to at least try to make a bid for T-Mobile, and banks have clarified that a deal would definitely be possible and priced at around $50 billion.
Recently, Sprint has discussed details with six banks about what types of financing structures and debt arrangements would be available should Sprint go forward with buying up T-Mobile. Typically, if a company isn't planning on purchasing another company, they don't have these types of talks just for fun, so it looks like the offer may be getting close to being announced publicly. Masayoshi Son, the chief executive officer of SoftBank (that owns 80% of Sprint stock) is rumored to make an official bid for the smaller carrier in June or July, which is just a month or two away.
Of course, even if T-Mobile accepts whatever offer Sprint makes, the companies will still have to go through the FCC before the merger would complete. The FCC shot down AT&T's attempted purchase of T-Mobile a few years ago, and these types of mergers are under heavy scrutiny with Comcast's infamous Time Warner buyout that we're all hearing about now, so there would still be a pretty good chance that the government would block the acquisition anyway. Regardless of what happens, it looks like Sprint is going to at least take a stab at merging the carriers to try to better compete with AT&T and Verizon, so at least we'll have some interesting news over the summer.
source: Bloomberg
Come comment on this article: Sprint looking to make a bid for T-Mobile as soon as June or July
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Up until last year, the only popular OEM whose devices were water and dust-resistant was Sony. However, this year there has been an uptick of OEMs making their latest generation of smartphones water resistant and dust proof. The most notable ones include Samsung's Galaxy S5 with an IP67 rating and the Sony Xperia Z2 with
The post What does your smartphone's IP rating really mean? appeared first on Cult of Android.
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One of the more controversial aspects of Google's Glass experiment has been the $1500 price tag that Explorers have to pony up to get their hands on the hardware. Most people expect Google to lower the cost by a significant amount when a final version for public sale is finally available. Just how low Google can go on their pricing and still have a profitable product may have been partially answered by a new teardown of Glass completed by TechInsights' Teardown.com division. They have estimated the costs of the components to be less than $80.
The team is still working on completing their teardown, but their initial cost estimate has raised some eyebrows and prompted a Google spokesperson to declare the estimate "absolutely wrong." One item that seems to be priced suspiciously low is the display itself which is very small yet produces a high resolution image. Teardown.com pegged this part, including the touchscreen portion, at only $3.
The other issue with Teardown.com's estimate is that it only deals with the hardware components and does not factor in any of the R&D costs or production costs. These are probably quite high and sales in large numbers will be needed to spread those out and reduce them significantly. As some are discovering thanks to recent problems with software updates on the device, Google has quite a few people devoted to support for the Explorer program, only adding to the costs that have to be factored in.
At what point would the price be right for you to invest in a pair of Google Glass?
source: Teardown.com
via: Wall Street Journal
Come comment on this article: New Google Glass teardown estimates cost of hardware at under $80
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Here comes the next wave of Chrome OS devices. On Tuesday, May 6, Google and Intel will be co-hosting a Chrome OS event once again. Google's vice president of product management Caesar Sengupta will be joined by Intel's Navin Shenoy, the vice president and general manager of the mobile computing group. A panel will also join the two at Tuesday's event.
What will be going down aside from the panel's Q&A session? Brand new Chrome OS devices will be announced. This means we will see new Chromebooks and likely new Chromeboxes. This event is only the start of what should be a fun month of May. Following Tuesday's event, Motorola has something scheduled for May 13 and LG for May 27.
Any kind of Chrome OS device you are looking forward to in particular?
Come comment on this article: Google, Intel co-hosting Chrome OS event next week to showcase new devices
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Not unlike Phil's Atlantean hometown, you may need a bucket to deal with April's deluge of high-quality of Android app releases. Lucky for you, we've wrung out the Play Store for our top five picks. There are quite a few big names this go-around, including some apps straight from Google. Ready? Let's dive in.
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