Year: 2016

Samsung enjoys its most profitable quarter in two years thanks to strong Galaxy S7 sales

Samsung this morning announced results for the second calendar quarter ended June 30, and the numbers are encouraging despite global smartphone sales cooling down. The South Korean conglomerate's mobile division reported “substantial earnings improvement” buoyed by strong sales of its flagship Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge flagship smartphones.

The data is newsworthy given strong competition Samsung has been facing on the low-end from Chinese rivals like Xiaomi and Huawei and on the high-end from Apple's iPhone. This is the best earning result Samsung has posted in two years, by the way.

Here’s why PC notebook makers, aside from Apple, have been slow to adopt USB-C

When it debuted in March 2015, Apple's twelve-inch MacBook has ushered in an era of USB-C, then new high-speed connectivity option from the USB Implementers' Forum with a reversible, ultra-thin plug resembling Apple's proprietary Lightning port. In fact, the MacBook was the first notebook to incorporate a USB-C connection as its power port, completely replacing Apple's own MagSafe charging.

PC notebook vendors around the world were supposed to follow in Apple's footsteps and readily adopt USB-C across their products—and some have—but too many of them were, and still are, less keen to adopt USB Type C connections on their products. The reason for this is two-fold: design and cost considerations.

iPhone 7 pre-orders to kick off on September 9?

Last week, revered leakster Evan Blass of @EVLeaks predicted that Apple's next iPhone would launch on the week of September 12. He later clarified that he was referring to the iPhone 7's retail release—which should happen on Friday, September 16—not the launch event. Following up on his claims, Blass wrote today on Twitter that Apple will kick off pre-orders for the device on Friday, September 9.

Apple’s marketing honcho Phil Schiller joins biotech company Illumina’s board of directors

Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, has been named to biotechnology company Illumina's board of directors. According to Illumina's announcement, Phil’s track record and global experience in marketing world-class products “will help guide us as we continue to develop innovative new solutions for our customers.”

Of course, Apple's interest in health-related technologies for the Apple Watch is well known. Illuminas President and CEO, Francis deSouza, said that Phil's vision, integrity and passion are “fully aligned” with Illumina’s core values.

Pokémon GO Plus companion wearable accessory has been delayed until September

Pokémon GO Plus, a Bluetooth-driven wearable device that helps you catch 'em all without looking at Nintendo's Pokémon GO augmented-reality game on your smartphone, is now set to launch in September, not late-July as previously announced. Nintendo of America tweeted news of the delay earlier this week.

“The Pokemon GO Plus accessory will now be released Sept 2016 instead of the originally expected end of July launch,” reads the announcement.

Controlling what your Eevee evolves into in Pokémon GO

Eevee is an unusual Pokémon in the hit mobile game because unlike other Pokémon, it can evolve into three possible outcomes. Those three are Flareon (fire), Jolteon (electric), and Vaporeon (water).

Typically, when you evolve an Eevee, the outcome is going to be 100% random, but as the game publisher Niantic confirmed this week, there is a small cheat that you can use to actually control what your Eevee evolves into, and we'll talk about that in this tutorial.

This tweak brings iOS 8-styled alerts back to iOS 9

iOS 9 made some UI refinements over iOS 8, despite the fact that most of the UI looks primarily the same as before. One of the things Apple tweaked were the alerts that can pop up on your screen from notifications.

In iOS 9, Apple changed the design a little bit and made the corners much rounder, and if you aren't a fan of the change, then a new jailbreak tweak called 8Alerts may tickle your fancy.

Apple is reportedly revoking some certificates used to jailbreak iOS 9.3.3 from Safari

Over the weekend, Pangu and 25PP launched a jailbreak for iOS 9.2-9.3.3, and not long after, iOS developers found a way to make the jailbreak possible via the Safari web browser without the need to use a computer.

Unfortunately, however, Apple appears to be blocking the enterprise certificate that has been used in this process, so attempting jailbreaks from the device itself isn't currently working.

Apple passes 1 billion iPhones sold

Apple on Wednesday announced that it recently passed the 1 billion iPhones sold milestone. In a press release, the company said that during a staff meeting in Cupertino this morning, Tim Cook told employees that they had sold their one billionth handset last week.

The news comes just a day after Apple issued its third quarter earnings report, in which it said it sold just over 40 million iPhones during the 3-month period. That number is down some 7 million units from Q3 2015, but obviously they still have a reason to celebrate.

Google app gains Forward button (seriously!), more reliable voice search & other new features

In addition to adding support for Accelerated Mobile Pages to Chrome for iOS, Google also this morning issued a refresh to its native search app on the App Store, which supports Google Now cards. Google 17.0 for iOS, a free download, packs in improvements to help you get things done more quickly in the app such as the addition of a Forward button (what took them so long, really?), a more reliable voice search, the ability to revisit recent pages for a full seven days and a few local search results improvements.

Chrome for iOS now supports Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages

Google today issued a small but important refresh to the Chrome browser for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch on the App Store. The updated software bumps up version number to 52.0.2743.84 and brings official support for Accelerated Mobile Pages that, similar to Instant Articles on Facebook, load in a fraction of the time of their non-accelerated mobile versions. Any news stories and articles from partner publishers that have a lightning bolt and “AMP” next to them in search results will load instantly when tapped on.