Plus, the tidal wave of Flappy Bird clones plaguing the Play Store, news about LG’s own-brand flagship, and persistent rumors of a metal Galaxy S 5 variant.
Strategically leaking information about upcoming smartphones and tablets to the press is a favorite way for manufacturers to create buzz around their products without having to spoil everything in an official reveal. This has been your tech marketing tip of the day, thank you, you’ve been a lovely audience.
All right, if you must know, I bring this up because a surprisingly lengthy video showing HTC’s upcoming M8 in detail was released by someone apparently named Roshan Jamkatel earlier this week.
A couple of things – no, it’s not Roger Ebert or anything in terms of deep criticism, and this isn’t the original video, because Jamkatel yanked it after HTC senior global online communications manager Jeff Gordon came down the mountain after him on Twitter, saying that Jamkatel “wasn’t going to have a good week,” and responding that HTC had the IMEI of the device after young Roshan tried to claim that it was a fake phone. (Most of the tweets have been deleted, but Wired, among others has screengrabs of the conversation.)
It got weirder from there – Jamkatel asked other users, in vain, not to repost the video, Gordon deleted a bunch of his tweets (citing an ongoing investigation) after others jumped on him for threatening a kid, and there was a suggestion that Jamkatel’s parents were HTC workers and would be fired for his indiscretion. (Another Twitter user suggests that this may not be true.)
As usual, nobody really knows anything, although the thunderous response from a senior HTC exec suggests that the phone in the video is probably genuine. If HTC didn’t leak the phone on purpose, why would they care about a bogus amateur video? And if it’s a choreographed leak, why would they use a fake phone?
Assuming, then, that the M8 in question is the real deal, the video is pretty enlightening. Dual rear-mounted cameras seem to be a go, the hardware buttons along the bottom of the screen are history, an SD card slot has been added. The right-side mounted volume rocker on the HTC One has been retained, but it’s now slightly raised, making it a lot easier to find by touch, and the headphone jack has been moved to the bottom of the device. Like its chief competitor, the Samsung Galaxy S 5, the new HTC flagship looks to be an evolutionary device, not a revolutionary one.
Mobile gaming’s never been an industry with too many scruples about simply copying successful products, but the sheer number of Flappy Bird clones on the Google Play Store is pretty amazing. Infesting the “top free games” section are Clumsy Bird, Splashy Fish, Floppy Bird Pro, and Hoppy Frog, and that’s just at a glance. Moving along, there’s a version featuring the head of rapper Drake called “Tiny Flying Drizzy,” a similar entry called “Flying Miley Cyrus,” 3D Flying Bird, and Jumpy Jack. Believe me when I tell you I could go on.
Seriously, just make it stop. Either that, or somebody please make a version using the art assets from Angry Birds, so that they can get sued so hard by Rovio that a quantum singularity of lazy rip-off artists appears and sucks all the Flappy Bird clones into the next dimension.
The biggest splash that LG has made in the Android market lately has been as the manufacturer of Google’s Nexus 5 and as a competitor in the fascinating and stupid world of curved-screen smartphones.
That may be about to change, however, as BGR reports that the LG G3 is headed for a summer launch date, with the idea of letting the Galaxy S 5 hype die down a little.
According to the report, the G3 will have an impressive 13MP camera that also incorporates optical image stabilization, based on a forum posting that purported to show a photo taken with said camera.
Ever since the iPhone 5 launched in 2012, metal-bodied smartphones have carried a certain cachet. One of the factors that fans of the HTC One cite when comparing it to its rival Galaxy S 4 is the aluminum construction, and there’s a long-standing school of thought that says Samsung’s plastic designs make its phones seem cheap.
Almost as long-standing as that school of thought are the rumors that Samsung is going to break its habits and release a metal Android phone – the latest is a report from GSM Arena that says the Samsung Galaxy F could be being readied for release, citing South Korean news outlets. Little else is known about the purported Galaxy F, but GSM Arena does pass along the tidbit that it could boast a 2560×1600 display. Yikes.
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