Google’s antitrust accusations in Europe haven’t faded away as they might have hoped, and now new anti-competitive allegations have been levied against the search giant’s mobile operating system, Android.

The new allegations come from a French group called Fairseach whose members include Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle! The group claims that Google is deceiving users of Android and tricking them to use Google apps rather than competitors.

It’s all rather petty and honestly quite insulting. Android has been customized to benefit third parties ever since the OS launched. The latest example being Facebook Home which uses Facebook’s apps in place of the native Google offerings. Will Facebook also be targeted? What’s more, Android users are educated and curious enough to choose apps which they prefer and suit them best, it just happens Google’s apps often turn out to be the best.

We ask you Microsoft, if Android’s promotion of Google Apps is so terrible– why is it that you do the same with Windows Phone 8?

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A new report just released shows that mobile patents make up 25% of all patents registered in 2012, and guess who has the largest share? That’s right Korea’s very own Samsung.

The Korean tech giant and current ‘winner’ at all things Android, has been heavily stocking up on mobile based patents during 2012 in the hopes to avoid lawsuit trouble, should they have to do battle in court again in the future. Samsung now apparently has more mobile patents than both Nokia and Microsoft, two companies who started stocking up way back in the mid 90′s. 

What do you think of this whole ‘patent war’ culture that has become so big in the last couple decades? Are you sick all of these companies grabbing up patents and then trying to sue one another or is it just the way the business world has to work?

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Millions of people use Facebook every day, and Mark Zuckerberg and his team like to keep it that way. That’s why they have introduced a revamped news feed for making home pages cleaner and more vibrant, and thereby ensuring that users stay interested in the world’s most popular social networking site. But, it appears like it’s going to take a while before the redesigned news feed hits all users around the world.

Kate O’Neill, Facebook product marketing manager, said, “This is an update to a service hundreds of millions of people around the world use every day, so we need to make sure this experience feels as great as possible”.

The redesign will only be available to a small number of Facebook users today. As for everybody else, you guys can just wait or if you want to speed things up a bit, you can head to facebook.com/newsfeed for signing up for the waiting list. And the mobile version of the news feed will start rolling out in the next couple of weeks.

Regarding what all things are coming, the new news feed will be less cluttered and you will get bigger photos and videos, along with the ability to choose categories such as All Friends, Photos, Music and Following for sorting through posts more easily.

What do you think of the redesign, too similar to Google+?

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The post Facebook Announces Revamped News Feed, Will Slowly Rollout appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

If you are looking for a job then Microsoft is hiring. It looks like they need engineers to help them prep the latest version of their Windows Phone mobile OS.

A job posting states that Microsoft is looking for a software development engineer to work on a Windows phone update scheduled to release during the holiday season:

“This is a great time to join us as we’re completing our current release and getting ready for our next release targeting the holiday of this year.”

While we the details don’t mention a major release, the time frame certainly indicates this could be the case. Previous Windows phone updates have been released in September and October, perhaps Windows phone 8.5 is heading to phones for Christmas 2013? Considering all the previous rumors about Windows Blue and Windows Phone Blue, this could certainly end up being a job related to that effort. What do you think?

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The post Windows Phone Update Hinted at in Microsoft Job Posting appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Samsung’s Android dominance is going from strength to strength, and although it’s great to see the Korean electronics giant’s rise, we can’t help wonder if they are making more enemies than friends.

Take their latest in-house mobile payment platform, Samsung Wallet, for example. The icon looks a lot like Passbook on iOS, as does the general UI, and the name is the same as Google’s own payment system.

Like Passbook on iOS, the Samsung Wallet app can be used for paying for movie tickets, hotel and flights, they have even teamed up with some major partners including Walgreens, Expedia and Lufthansa. What I don’t quite understand though is why Samsung couldn’t have worked with Google to bring their ideas to Google Wallet?

Android is already fragmented due to the number of devices running different versions of the OS, various screen sizes, and third party Eco-systems. Do we now need competing payment options too?

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The post Samsung Wallet Takes on Google and Apple’s Mobile Payment Apps appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

There is strong rivalry between Qualcomm and Nvidia on the market but lately the momentum appears to be swinging in the former’s direction. As you might already know, the LG Optimus G Pro and the HTC One are coming with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor. And now, right after Nvidia unveiled their newest chipset, Qualcomm has announced their 200 and 400 chips.

The new chipsets are meant for entry-level and mid-range smartphones, and for the high-end devices the company already introduced the 600 and 800 processors back in January. The newly announced chips are coming with improved battery life, better performance and connectivity.

The Snapdragon 200 is coming with quad ARM Cortex-A5 CPUs which will run at 1.4GHz per core and an Adreno 203 GPU. You will also get support for 8 Megapixel cameras, HD video playback, GPS, and it features better battery life as said earlier and Multi-SIM capabilities, so it see quite a bit of popularity in Asia as well.

The 400 chipset will be available in two configurations: dual Krait CPUs at 1.7GHz per core or quad Cortex A7 at 1.4GHz. You will be able to enjoy 3D gaming with an Adreno 305 GPU and get support for up to a 13.5MP snapper.

According to the company, 55 Snapdragon 800-powered devices should be available by the second half of 2013. No info on which all devices will be powered by the newly announced processors. But we will keep you updated, so stay tuned.

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The post Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 And 400 Mobile Processors Coming Soon appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Earlier in the year we reported on Nvidia’s Project Shield Android mobile gaming console.  Now Project Shield demonstrates, in a video, its ability to wirelessly pair its Nvidia Project Shield handheld gaming console with a PC.  In the video they access their game titles on their PC by simply having a GeForce GTX 680 enabled PC with the software installed.

The Nvidia Shield sports a Tegra 4 processor, a custom 72 core GPU all being controlled by the dual analog control sticks and the 4 trigger controls.  Click play below to watch the Nvidia gaming console in action!

“In this episode, we take you through a demo of Project SHIELD playing Need for Speed: Most Wanted via a GeForce GTX 680-enabled PC. You’ll see how the best quality graphics from the PC combine with the smooth dual analog 

joysticks of Project SHIELD to deliver one of the best driving experiences possible.”

The Nvidia Project Shield has managed to create an awesome handheld gaming system with enough horsepower to play titles traditionally only available on your stationary consoles.  Is this the future of gaming as we know it or do you think that pricing and other issues will hold it back from taking the mobile gaming world by storm? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

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Oh Hi! Octopi! combines retro nostalgia with cute animal characters. With an interesting puzzle design, although Oh Hi! Octopi! sounds like a fun, casual game for any iOS gamer. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

GAMEPLAY AND CONTROLS

Oh Hi! Octopi! is a basic platform puzzle game with a few new mechanics. Waves of octopi will appear and walk slowly around the board. Use your character to hit the octopi with the hammer to stun them, and change their colors, then “smash” the button in the center to create a balloon. The balloon will destroy stunned octopi in groups of at least two matching colors. After clearing one level, you move to the next round, which is the same, but with more octopi. Sounds simple, right?

It is not as simple as it sounds. After going through a tutorial that is too short. Oh Hi! Octopi! suffers a lot from having bad controls. While the developer, kode80, had the players’ best interests in mind, the one-button to control everything only creates for a frustrating experience. You control everything by tapping the screen; everything from moving, hitting the hammer and jumping. This makes your character move around erratically on the screen and when you want to do accomplish one thing, you cannot because your character is moving around wildly. For example, if you want to hit the button that creates the balloon, your character moves around too much for you to efficiently release the balloon.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

The sound and music of the game, while reminiscent of retro gaming, is very repetitive and you will likely be muting the music after a few minutes of play.

The retro-style graphics and cute octopi of Oh Hi! Octopi! instantly draw you in. It is a shame that the trouble with the rough controls outweighs the charm of the graphics. Also, the scenery and octopi never change, which can get dull quickly.

PROS

• Good retro graphics
• Interesting match-making puzzle idea

CONS

• Music that quickly becomes bothersome
• Too short tutorial
• Very bad controls that create a lot of problems for the player

I wish I could say I enjoyed Oh Hi! Octopi!, but the game is very close to being unplayable due to the poor controls. If Oh Hi! Octopi! had differing controls for some abilities, the character may be less erratic and I may have been able to experience more of the puzzle aspect of the game. This game had the potential to be a refreshing take on a reto-style puzzle game, but it has simply failed to deliver on multiple levels.

Download Oh Hi! Octopi! for $.99 here.

The post App Review: Oh Hi! Octopi! appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

With Microsoft Windows 8 getting ARM processor support, now more than ever Intel needs to step up its mobile game in order to stay competitive with its upcoming Windows tablets and current-gen mobile technology.

And step it up Intel has.

On the smartphone scene, Intel is preparing to show off its Medfield Android-based devices at CES 2012. Meanwhile, anonymous sources from Acer and Lenovo component suppliers have released a new rumor that both vendors are in fact working on next-gen Windows 8 x86 tablets that will run on Intel’s upcoming “Clover Trail” chipset.

While no specifics regarding Clover Trail have been revealed, it is believed these next-gen Atom processors will be able to compete much closer with ARM competitors in both power-consumption and overall performance.

Tablets running Clover Trail, like those from Acer and Lenovo, are not expected to hit the market until late-2012.

While I wish Intel the best, so far all the cards lay in favor of ARM on the mobile front, of course, you never know. Perhaps Intel really does have some tricks up its sleeves that will finally shift the battle in its favor.

The post Acer And Lenovo Preparing Next-Gen Atom ‘Clover Field’ Tablets appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Google thinks that there aren’t enough mobile-friendly websites, and many with smartphones may tend to agree, albeit for different reasons. More mobile sites potentially means more money for Google through mobile ad campaigns, and more mobile sites mean better accessibility to the web for smartphone users.

Those are the reasons why the folks at Google have launched their project HowToGoMo.com. GoMo is essentially a tech-related awareness campaign with profit potential, aiming to promote the building of mobile sites.

Visitors to the sleek, user-friendly GoMo site are informed about why Google thinks they need a mobile version of their website using quick blurbs and cute, quirky illustrations and informative graphs. Additionally, Google provides visitors with best practices information for their mobile site, current mobile trends, mobile projections and case studies of how mobile sites worked for others to show why a mobile site should be seen as a necessity. If a visitor isn’t convinced yet, they can use the “GoMoMeter” to see how their existing site looks on a smartphone and to learn how to make it better.

Once a visitor has been won over by GoMo’s message, visitors can use a search tool to find a web developer, agency or service that specializes in building mobile websites. Information is provided for services in a wide variety of price ranges and time frames for full service and do-it-yourself solutions.

As Google’s stats state, mobile searches have grown 4X since the last year and by 2013, more people will surf the web from phones than PCs. Now may really be the time for even more sites to Go Mo.

The post Google’s GoMo Initiative Aims To Mobilize The Web appeared first on Mobile Magazine.