Galaxy S5 Mini Spotted On Firm’s Website

An exciting new revelation has been leaked from the Samsung UK website.  It seems that the Galaxy S5 Mini will launch any day now and preparations are underway!  A photo of the new Galaxy S5 ‘mini’ has been posted by tipster @evleaks on the UK website.  The leaked photo seems to be from a placeholder on Samsung’s official UK site. 

It may be that the professed Galaxy S5 Mini may be named the Galaxy S5 Dx because the image displays a Dx suffix under the name, Galaxy S5.  Also, the leaked image shows the phone in various colour varieties including black, gold, yellow, blue and white.  There are also hints that the Galaxy S5 Mini will be well matched and compatible with Gear 2 and Gear Fit, Samsung’s brand new wearable tech.

The purported Galaxy S5 Mini first made headlines when specifications made it through the grapevine in April.  Those rumours claimed that the S5 Mini would have Android 4.4; a quad-core Snapdragon processor; 8-megapixel rear camera; 2-megapixel front-facing camera; 1.5GB of RAM; 16GB inbuilt storage, an IR blaster and 2100mAh battery.  All of which makes for an incredible piece of kit!

Although there are many rumours floating about, nothing has been announced about features such as fingerprint scanners, heart rate sensors of IP67 certification for dust and water-resistance.  We will just have to wait until the official phone makes its way into our hands!  However, last week on Samsung Finland’s support page, an alleged Galaxy S5 Mini listing of the SM-G800F made an appearance closely followed by another listing on an import and export site from India, which suggested the Galaxy S5 would have a 4.47 inch display.

Whatever may happen, this new phone will be an exciting new addition to the Galaxy family!

[Image: collected]

Twitter Adds Mute Function To Mobile Apps

After I started to use Twitter, it didn’t really take long at all before I was irritated by the amount of tweets certain people would write. Of course, this would mostly happen during certain sporting events, where someone would tweet after every good or bad play, or every awful call from the referees, and soon my Twitter feed was full of junk I couldn’t care less about. At the time, there really wasn’t anything I could do about it besides unfollow or block a person, and I’m a nice guy so I didn’t do that. So I suffered through mind-numbing tweet after mind-numbing tweet.

But last week I read some good news. It would seem that many people get annoyed by endless streams of tweets by the same user. As a result, Twitter is trying out a new feature on their mobile apps, and it lets a user temporarily mute users they’re tired of seeing on their feed. This feature will certainly be a welcome change for many.

It’s unknown if and when Twitter will add the mute feature to its standard site (non-mobile), but if it’s popular on the mobile sites one can only imagine it won’t be too long before they make the change.
If you’re a Twitter user, does anyone pop right out that you think you’d like to mute – at least for a little while? Be honest – you know there’s at least one person you could use a little silence from.
How do you feel about this change? Do you think it’s a good one, or do you think you just shouldn’t follow anyone who might one day annoy you?

[Image via techvoize]

SOURCE: BBC News

Google Now Helps You Get Your Shopping Done

The folks at Google must be putting in some overtime lately, as there have been several key updates to their personal assistant within the past few weeks. Last week, Techbeat reported that thanks to a new update Google Now would remember where you parked your car in case you couldn’t find it when you came out of the store. That wasn’t the only new feature that has people talking, though. Another update is sure to have people talking…and buying.

That’s right – Google Now will now help you find items you’ve been looking for. For instance, if you’ve used the Google app to search for “Arrow Season 1 Bluray”, you will now get a card that will show up when there’s a nearby store which carries that specific item. Pretty soon, it seems like we won’t need any other assistant besides Google!


Let Google Find It For You!
Along with the store(s) that carry the item, it will also list the available prices. But you’ll have to make a call or actually walk into the store to see if they have any of them left on the shelves. Hey, Google Now can only do so much. Eventually, though, one can only hope the service will be able to check the physical stock of a store.

Of course, if you’re not interested in this service, you can always turn it off in the Google Now settings, or just swipe the card away when it appears on your screen and tell it you’re not interested in seeing those type of notifications.

[Image via AndroidCentral]

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Accidentally Confirmed?

A teasing side to Microsoft seems to have come out in recent times. Last week, the company sent out invites to journalists regarding a “small” event for the 20th of May. Naturally, many of us took that as a teaser for the much talked about/rumored Surface Mini. Yesterday, though, it seems that the copywriters over at Microsoft released another teaser via its Support Page, specifically in a post for the Windows 8.1 update.

The article had a line referring to the Surface Pro 3: “adds support to the Surface Pro 3 camera.” I say had because since tech news sites picked up on that, the article has been revised.

While the reference may have been a real teaser, The Verge also points out that it could have been an honest typo. After all, the numbers 2 and 3 are right next to each other on the keyboard, right? Then again, you’d expect such a company to have a strict set of proofreading eyes. Additionally, if it were only a typo, then it could have been easily corrected – as opposed to pulling out the article.

Whatever the case may be, we already know that we are supposed to see an Intel-based Surface in the near future. Could this be the “teased” Surface Pro 3?
Currently, the Surface Pro 2 seems to be doing all right, with its Haswell processor. It also has its solid magnesium body going for it, not to mention its display, which is nothing to scoff at. The OS is also an improvement over its predecessor, but on the downside, the it’s still clunky compared to other tablets out there (hence the highly likely possibility of the Surface Mini being unveiled on the 20th?). Then there is the matter of the price, which is still considered to be in the high range.

We can speculate all we want about whether Microsoft accidentally (or purposely) referred to the Surface Pro 3 or someone made a typo, but for sure, we’ll be all eyes and ears next week for the event.

[Image via Microsoft Windows Techs]

Intel’s New 730 Series SSD

The Intel Corporation knows both the technical and commercial value of SSD’s and has a selection to choose from.  One of the frontrunners is the Intel 730 Series.  This was introduced to market a couple of months ago in February 2014.

The drive was aimed squarely at professionals and enthusiasts, as it is a high-performance consumer SSD. This SSD was in contrast to recent drives that have taken to employing SandForce controllers with Intel’s firmware.

So this time, Intel went back to using its own controller and firmware and the drive specifies its own NAND flash, here 20nm MLC. Intel says that up to 70 GB of writes per day for the 480 GB capacity models can be accomplished, this suggests a total writespan of 127 TB.   The firm is confident of the product’s endurance that they have offered a 5-year warranty.

Intel doesn’t specify any RAM cache details, it is understood though that the larger of the two available models at 480 GB uses 512 MB of DDR3 DRAM memory.
Intel’s figures of the internal power consumption are 5.5 W when active and 1.5 W while idle.  Because of this power consumption, it is suggested this SSD would not be a great choice for laptops wanting a decent battery life.

The performance of this drive in uncomplicated sequential runs, will comfortably reach the SATA Revision 3.0 limit, achieving 559 MB/s for reads and 507 MB/s for writes.
So, with a good warranty, datacentre-class integrity and top-tier performance this SSD form Intel is hitting all the right notes. The drive gives an enormous data-write ceiling which is needless to say, very impressive.

The 730 Series is an expensive drive at £363 but if you want speed at the SATA limit and a formal guarantee from the manufacturer of long endurance, this Intel SSD will give you both.

SOURCE:http://www.macworld.co.uk/review/ssd-flash/intel-730-series-ssd-480-gb-review-3515987/

iPhone 5 is 'slowest smartphone' In Test of 7 Popular Smartphone

Test of the seven most well liked Smartphones found that iPhone five came last, process requests at 0.5 the speed of the Samsung Galaxy S4. The phones were placed through a series of benchmark tests to live processor and memory performance, that show however quickly the phone can permit picture piece of writing, running graphic-intensive games, and victimization many apps right away. Samsung Galaxy S4, the quickest phone of these tested,
has a 1.9GHz quad-core processor that helped generate its spectacular score. The phone received a mark of 3188 on the business recognized check, compared to Apple iPhone 5's 1664 score. Which? Client watchdog said: “We place all the handsets through identical tests. Without doubt, Apple can upgrade its next iPhone once it launches this fall. "For the instant, Samsung’s Galaxy S4 are that the phone to beat once it involves speed." The second quickest phone was hierarchical as HTC One that encompasses a quad-core one. 7-inch processor and 2GB Ram. Which? Aforesaid the phone "will offer many punches for phone homeowners WHO use Gmail, Facebook, Instagram and Angry Birds all at identical time." Sony's Xperia Z came in an exceedingly shut third, followed by Google's Nexus four that had simply thirty-nine fewer points. however the fourth place phone is over £200 cheaper than any of these within the prime 3. The final phones to complete the set where Samsung's Galaxy Note two and therefore the BlackBerry Z10 that came in fifth and sixth severally.