In a bid to take the Android smartphone marketplace into its own hands, Motorola (now owned by Google) is readying an “X Phone” (as dug up by the WSJ), to launch next year. Everything is on the table here: this device is not set to replace the Nexus or Droid lines, but rather to stand on its own, taking on and beating the famous Samsung Galaxy and Apple iPhone lines. After the “X Phone” is complete however, an “X Tablet” is planned for release sometime after.
Desired technologies include a high-quality camera, superior photo software, a very high-end processor, as well as bendable screens and even ceramics designed to make the device durable. With parts like those, this is a phone that requires not only a lot of work, but thought as well. Problem is, even the “X Phone” has been in development, the project may be scrapped and turned over to another device — or it may be awaiting the finishing touches. At this point, we’ll have to wait and see.
Via: Wall Street Journal
Chad, man. You’re such a jerk. We arranged to get all this looked after stuff for free, and now he’s selling it all! Apparently that’s what the famous online webcomic, XKCD thinks of the Instagram Terms of Service drama, where most people thought that the changes meant Instagram could sell and advertise your images, for free.
It turns out if you were the head of the Windows division at Microsoft, and got fired because you didn’t work well with your co-workers, you have a great chance at becoming a professor at Harvard Business School. On his Twitter feed Wednesday, Sinofsky announced that he was “excited to return” to teach at Harvard Business School, this coming spring. CNET noted that Sinofsky had previously served as a “visiting scholar” at Harvard Business School in the late ’90s, so he has some past experience to fall back on. Good luck, Professor Sinofsky.
Previously only available in the European Union, the scan and match feature of Google Music was an easy way to get your entire local music library and have it matched to the cloud catalog, avoiding as many differences as possible, even in the bitrate of the original file (which can vary anywhere from 320kbps to higher or lower). Scan and Match is now available in the United States for Google Music users, all the while being free and nearly unrecognizable because the matching is done in the background.
Coming straight out of the leaky tubes of upcoming technology, is the HTC M7. It’s basically a One X successor, containing a 4.7-inch 1080p “SoLux” screen with 468ppi, LTE with improved viewing angles, color accuracy and outdoor visibility. Other new feature include a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera leveraging a f/2.0 lens and support for 1080p, slow-mo and HDR video recording — plus front-facing 2-megapixel shooter capable of capturing footage in 1080p. Internally, it’s believed the phone will be outfitted with a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in memory. Stereo speakers and a Beats amplifier should round out the feature set. It would be part of the new Sprint and Verizon catalogs, but an initial announcement may not come until Mobile World Congress in Spring of 2013.
As part of a short and sweet update, the T-Mobile Galaxy Note II will gain access to Samsung’s Multi-Window trait, due to hit the 5.5-inch, S-Pen-toting phablet on December 19th, via an upcoming software update. Other than the Multi-Window multitasking feature, T-Mobile’s page doesn’t list any other major changes (sans for some fixes to issues with Exchange and Gmail), so it looks like that’s about it.
In a very swift change from Apple Maps to Google Maps, consumers have downloaded the new app from the iTunes App Store 10 million times — in just 48 hours. That’s according to Google SVP of Commerce and Local, Jeff Huber, who took to the search giant’s social portal to announce the milestone. Within just 2 days of its release to iTunes, iOS users crying out for a non-native mapping solution downloaded the app in excess of 10 million times, thus fulfilling their needs of Google’s fantastic turn-by-turn navigation and wealth of up-to-date (and accurate) map data.
Got a Samsung phone? Well, the Koreans at the Big S will have to publish a software update for it, because “Alephzain”, a modder/hacker was able to use it to root his Samsung Galaxy S III. The bad part? It can delete or completely brick your Samsung smartphone, all because it has certain Exynos processors, a key element to using the exploit. It’s working in practice as well (besides malware apps); another user called “Chainfire” has 
Twitter is slowly rolling out an archive of all your tweets to the Settings page of your Twitter account. From there, you request that an HTML file that contains a calendar of all your tweets is sent to you via email — and voila! You have every single tweet you posted, for good or for bad. Currently, I’ve been unable to test out the new feature, but that could change any minute, just like for every other member of the tech press.
