Samsung has finally unveiled the next in their line of globally available smartphones the Galaxy S4

It’s been leaked, teased, accused of being a copy of its predecessor, and celebrated as the likely champion of the mobile ecosystem for 2013. Samsung has finally unveiled the next in their line of globally available smartphones, the Galaxy S4.

Times Square lit up in anticipation of Samsung’s event, and despite LG’s shenanigans earlier in the day it felt like the world stood still as JK Shin and crew took to the stage to unveil their new flagship smartphone. The Galaxy S4 is finally here, and while it may look almost exactly like last years model, the two phones couldn’t be more different. Samsung’s Galaxy S4 is just barely lighter (130g), thinner (7.9mm), and possibly even shinier than the Galaxy S3, but what is underneath that Gorilla Glass 3 and textured casing is entirely deserving of the praise it will undoubtedly display.

Much like the previous generation, Samsung has created what is essentially two phones here. There’s the Exynos based Octo-Core processor clocked at 1.6 GHz and the Snapdragon based Quad Core 1.9GHz processor. These two chipsets are expected to behave differently, but performance is supposed to be similar for most tasks between two chipsets. Regardless of which processor your carrier wind up with, your Galaxy S4 will also be packing 2GB of RAM and either 16, 32, or 64GB of storage depending on which model you purchase. Both the 2600mAh battery and the microSD slot are accessible though the removable rear panel, and the microSD slot can support up to 64GB. On the other side of that removable panel you’ll find a 5-inch Super AMOLED display with 1080p resolution at 441ppi, coming out just under the HTC One’s 468ppi at 4.7-inches. This display is a world first, and Samsung is very proud of what this display is capable of.

With the increasing focus on the quality of smartphone cameras, Samsung pulled out the stops an was sure to show off their new toys. The 13MP rear camera and 2MP front camera are certainly the high end of what is now considered pretty standard fare, but the software that drives this technology is brand new. Samsung is placing a premium on the ability to use both cameras at once, allowing you to record and share both the experience you are recording and your own experience at the same time. Whether you are video chatting, taking a photo, or recording video, you’ll be able to use both cameras simultaneously. The front camera alone also gets some special treatment, being capable of 1080p video at 30FPS.


It wouldn’t be a Samsung phone if it weren’t packed full of TouchWiz flavored Android. The Galaxy S4 comes with Android 4.2.2 on board, making it the most up to date Android phone that isn’t a Nexus, but still packed with the latest from Samsung. Samsung has made the Galaxy S4 highly user focused, right down to the ability to adjust the sensitivity of the screen for use with gloves on. The Samsung Air Gesture, Smart Pause, and Smart Scroll features all focus on the ability to use the phone without touching it. You can look away to pause a video, wave your hand over the screen to scroll, and preview the next image or email with out placing your fingers on the screen. Samsung’s use of MHL 2, Bluetooth 4, and NFC technologies are all making comebacks with screen mirroring and smart sharing tools. On top of all of these new features Samsung has managed to maintain a user interface that Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note owners will recognize and understand with ease.

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Intel says the release is still “rough around the edges

The Asus Transformer AiO will be launching soon, and it looks like the company may need to thank Intel for some code contributions. That’s because Intel has just released its code for Android 4.2.2, and one of the key additions is support for dual-booting Android alongside Windows 8 on systems that utilize UEFI instead of BIOS. The new release actually doesn’t support booting using BIOS at all.

Intel says the release is still “rough around the edges,” and that it’s not the kind of OS you want to install on any device that contains mission-critical data or treasured family photos. Right now it’s pre-alpha software — the kind you might throw on a spare laptop or desktop or boot in a virtual machine so that you can take a sneak peek. There’s still a lot of work to be done before the Android 4.2.2 code is stable and optimized for use on Intel’s chips.

On non-UEFI systems, it has been possible to boot both Windows and Android for quite some time. Using a current Android-x86 image, you can install Google’s OS alongside Windows and then use the GRUB loader to enable boot-time switching. Intel’s work is welcome, though, since we haven’t seen a ton of touchscreen Windows hardware until the advent of Windows 8 — which has also contributed to the rise of UEFI on mainboards.

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Motorola has planted a substantial leak on the eve of the Samsung Galaxy S4

Either Motorola has planted a substantial leak on the eve of the Samsung Galaxy S4 launch, or this Vietnamese hardware vlogger is in trouble. Whatever the case may be, we can see a new Motorola phone on the horizon, and it’s looking pretty sweet.

Motorola hopefuls have been waiting and waiting for the often whispered X Phone. As Google approaches the end of the 18 month pipeline of hardware that was inherited at the time of purchasing the company, fans of what is to come are hoping for a spectacular new phone that may even be worthy of Nexus branding.

There’s never been any hard evidence of a Motorola phone in production yet, but there’s more than enough speculation to keep people talking as Moto’s competitors play their hands. If this video is any indication, even if this isn’t the X Phone, Motorola is clearly headed deeper into Stock Android territory.

The phone on display is a Snapdragon S4 Pro powered device that is all but Stock Android, running at least Android 4.2. The phone is packing 2GB of RAM under its 4.65″ 720p AMOLED display at 320ppi. In terms of hardware specs alone, the phone seems to very closely emulate the Nexus 4. The design shown here is pretty different from Motorola’s current design schema, opting for soft curves and a matte backing over the highly industrial look of the current RAZR line. The phone is obviously running on a GSM carrier, which could mean that it would be available to more than just Verizon Wireless customers if it is meant to hit the states.

The phone is briefly compared to an iPhone 5 in the video, and you can clearly see how nice and thin it is. The curved backing is a new design choice for Motorola, but it allows the camera and flash to lay flush with the phone. There doesn’t appear to be a volume rocker in the casing, which raises some questions about how you would do things like take screenshots or quickly mute the handset when a call was coming in. It’s possible that what we see here in this video is an unfinished product or a casing over the real phone, as it is clear the screen cover is hiding the front facing camera and the user in this video was never touching the actual glass.

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We all know that there is both good and bad bacteria

We all know that there is both good and bad bacteria, and there are many ways to take down the bad guys. Normally, we resort to applying some sort of material to ourselves — soap, medicine, antibacterial lotion, and so on. Now, though, scientists have discovered a new way to kill bacteria, and it doesn’t involve some sort of third-party material. The very structure of cicada wings traps bacteria, and slowly rips it apart.

At a microscopic level, the clanger cicada’s wing contains many tiny spikes. So, when some bacteria gets on the wing, the little guys essentially get impaled, then slowly slide down the spikes, being ripped apart until they die. The bacteria doesn’t instantly become impaled, though, as if it fell from a high ledge and landed square on a pole; it lands, and its own weight eventually pulls it down on to the spike, impaling it. As it slides, its skin becomes pulled apart, stretching the bacteria until it does, reminding us of a particular video game.

However, the scientists tested what they felt appeared to be happening. In a microwave, they cooked various bacteria at different degrees, which in turn made some bacteria skin more elastic than other skin. The bacteria with the more elastic skin succumbed to the slow, skin-being-ripped-apart death, while the bacteria with the harder skin did not. This confirmed that the cicada wing spikes are, in fact, killing bacteria.

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EA is continuing to wrestle with server issues and frustrated gamers attempting

EA is continuing to wrestle with server issues and frustrated gamers attempting to play the newly released and always-connected SimCity. But a post on the SimCity forums by developer Maxis has promised things will get better very soon.

Maxis has stated it is upset by what has happened during the first few days of the game’s launch due to there being too much demand for the servers EA allocated for the game. But the situation has been made worse because of a number of unexpected server architecture problems. This is why bugs such as save games being reverted back to earlier versions are probably occurring.

The solution is to add a lot more servers, which is happening over the next couple of days. Maxis is also fixing bugs as they get reported, with several major updates already deployed. If the additional servers come online, then hopefully the game will be a lot more stable before Saturday is over.

With all the problems you’d think nobody was playing the game, but that’s not the case according to the stats Maxis is collecting. Taking a single 24 hour period of game time, players managed to create over 38 million buildings, 7.5km of roads, and started 18 million fires. What’s a little worrying is they also know that 40 million pipes full of “poop” exist in the world.

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We’ve finally reached a point where it looks like all four major

We’ve finally reached a point where it looks like all four major US carriers have decided to push LTE to their entire network over the next few years. Now that the data part has been sorted out, the next step is Voice over LTE. Verizon’s aggressive push to LTE for data seems to be matched only by their new desire to ditch CDMA, but it’s going to take them a little while to get there.

There are a lot of significant benefits to VoLTE on any carrier, but especially for Verizon. This is a promise Verizon has been making for a couple of years now, and users are eager to make the switch. By removing the CDMA radio entirely, you not only save on battery life but you remove the complicated handoff method currently being deployed on Verizon. Verizon phones work really hard to gracefully slide from LTE to CDMA and back to LTE for streaming data, and the benefit in battery life alone when that is gone could be significant for some users.

In their rush to get LTE out to the US before anyone else, Verizon put themselves in a difficult situation when it comes to an upgrade path for their LTE network. Switching to an all LTE environment will mean upgrading each and every one of their LTE towers, which will more than likely result in a staged rollout where only parts of the LTE network are VoLTE ready for a significant period of time.

When Verizon was first rolling out their LTE network, it wasn’t even referred to as a 4G network by the ITU. The definition of 4G was altered to support the networks created by US carriers, who had already begun branding their networks. Unlike Sprint, whose towers were built to switch elegantly (just insert a new network card) between the existing LTE r9 and the not yet deployed LTE r10 (also called LTE Advanced), the Verizon towers are exclusively LTE r9. While VoLTE is supported in LTE r9, there’s a performance hit in both voice quality and data throughput when compared to LTE r10.

Verizon’s announcement that VoLTE will be rolling out in 2014 makes it sound like you’ll be able to ditch CDMA altogether and enjoy the high quality audio provided by your new VoLTE phone on January 1. Verizon’s rollout will be regional, just like the initial LTE rollout was, and it won’t be functional to have a CDMA free phone on Verizon for at least a year. Once you leave the comforts of your VoLTE network, you’d only be able to make calls if Verizon adopted a VoIP-like alternative for when you were off network.
Details surrounding the actual LTE rollout are sparse still, but based on what we know about Verizon’s network right now it is unlikely that the transition will be a simple, network-wide switch to this new platform. When considering Verizon’s current resources, and understanding that each and every LTE tower would need to be updated physically and individually, bringing their entire LTE network up to VoLTE before 2015 is likely cost prohibitive.

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EA is continuing to try and solve the server woes that are facing players attempting

EA is continuing to try and solve the server woes that are facing players attempting to access their newly purchased copies of SimCity. And yet, we have no real explanation as to why EA wasn’t prepared for the launch. It also doesn’t help that Kip Katsarelis, senior producer on SimCity, has partly blamed players for the problems simply by not leaving the game and rendering it too popular.

In a post on the SimCity forums, Katsarelis attempted to give an update on the situation regarding player access to servers. He said it only took a few hours for the North American servers to reach capacity on launch day because “players were having such a good time they didn’t want to leave.”

Normally that would be cause for celebration by a publisher and developer as it means the game you created is very popular. But not in this case. Katsarelis went on to say that because of this, it “made it difficult for new players to join.” It doesn’t matter if he meant that to be a positive thing or not, it’s not the right thing to say when your gamer base is totally frustrated with the situation.

A forum post by Maxis yesterday said that new servers would be online by Saturday, but Katsarelis suggests it’s going to take up 3 days to have them installed. He also said EA has prepared for Australian, Japanese, and gamers across Europe by rolling out more servers for each territory. We’ll find out soon enough if the extra capacity is enough to cope as the game launches across Europe today.

If you have managed to get on the servers be aware that SimCity is not functioning with all its features enabled at the moment. As a way of dealing with the server load, achievements, leaderboards, and Cheetah Speed (speeds up time in the game) have all been disabled temporarily. Maxis and EA haven’t stated when they will be turned back on yet.

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