Sprint Chairman Wants to Unleash a “Massive Price War” If they Can Buy T-Mobile

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It’s no longer a secret that Sprint’s Chairman, also the Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, has been trying to put together a bid for buying T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom. DT has been trying to get out of the US for quite some time, and they almost got out a couple years ago when AT&T was attempting to buy T-Mobile but that failed. Now Sprint is looking to buy them so they can better compete with AT&T and Verizon, who arguably have a duopoly in the US wireless industry. However, the FCC and DOJ aren’t keen on having only three wireless carriers in the US. They have stated that they want four. Which is why Softbank/Sprint still hasn’t put in a bid for T-Mobile yet.

“We’d like to make a deal, but there are steps and details that we have to work out,” Softbank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son stated on the Charlie Rose show earlier this week. Rose stated that the FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler wants more competition in the wireless industry, thus meaning he doesn’t want consolidation. However, Son’s response makes a ton of sense, that Sprint and T-Mobile “are two little ones who are not able to fight without enough scale.”

A Sprint/T-Mobile merger would turn the market into a “three heavyweight fight” stated Son. “I would like to have the real fight, not a pseudo fight, the real fight.” He continued to say “If I can have a real fight, I go in with a more massive price war.” The price war we’ve already been seeing from T-Mobile, has affected AT&T, while Verizon has decided to sit back and watch how it all plays out.

There was a recent study, which we covered, that found Sprint’s monthly bill to be second highest in the US following Verizon. The low-down of that study was that Verizon is averaging about $148/month, Sprint at $144/month and T-Mobile is $120/month with T-Mobile being the lowest among carriers. I’m really excited to see a price war between all the carriers, but we know Verizon won’t budge until they start losing a good number of customers. Which won’t happen because they have the best network, still. But a price war is something all consumers can get behind. Right?

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Leaked Sales Guide Shows How To Position The Latest Android HTC Flagship To Consumers

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HTC may be refusing to comment on leaks and speculations like always, which seems to be just fine since more leaks keep popping up. Perhaps part of the reason they have decided to keep things silent in regards to responding to these leaks is because we’re already so close the announcement date that commenting wouldn’t matter much. In any case, another leak has just popped up and this one is about the sales guides, which seems to include more specs and new features that we have previously not heard of. These sales guides have been acquired by GSM arena and seem to give us an inkling of information on how sales people would position the features of the new flagship device. There’s also a list of specs that has shown up as well, but as always we ask that you take this information with a tiny grain of salt as we have and most likely won’t hear anything from HTC themselves until they officially announce the device.

According to these spec sheets, the All New One will come with a 5-inch 1080P display, and should weigh about 160 grams. The processor is listed as being the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core clocked in at 2.3GHz, and battery wise the spec sheet lists a 2,600 mAh battery to keep your device juiced up. Their is apparently going to be a microSD card slot which we’ve already seen from the photo leaks, but we still really don’t know exactly what the internal storage will be. A good guess would be that it’ll come in at 16 or 32GB which is per usual with most smartphones currently.

In addition to the specs, the sales guide provides some interesting information about the device, and we couldn’t describe the phone better ourselves if we were trying to sell it. As the guide says, the HTC M8 is a precision crafted device from a single block of aluminum with a zero edge, smooth finish. This is really no surprise either as the HTC One carried the same design. It worked, so HTC had no reason to change it, only improve upon it. The guie lists the HTC M8′s finest features and selling points, like the new Blink Feed, Boom Sound, and HTC Zoe for use in creating the Mini-Movies of your life in only seconds. While the sales guide is all well and good, it isn’t needed. We’re already so excited over the matter that some of us were pretty much sold the moment we knew it was coming.

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The Chrome Web Store Gets An Update That Allows Free Trials For packaged Apps

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Here’s some good news for developers that have published apps on the Chrome Web Store or were thinking about putting their apps up for download. Google has just updated the Chrome Web Store with a few new features. Google is all about making things easier for users, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they wanted to make using packaged apps better. They have done this by allowing for developers of Chrome Web Apps to make their packaged apps available to users as a free trial. This would of course only apply to those of the apps that cost money, as free ones have no need for a trial of any kind. This could help some developers get more exposure for their hard work, and perhaps provide a launch pad for their app to become more widely used.

In addition tot he free trials for apps that Google has put in place, developers can also now sell Chrome Extensions, as well as sell Chrome Themes. For the most part, apps, themes and extensions within the Chrome Web Store are generally free, so it’ll be interesting to see how many of these paid offerings we see in the coming months. If a developer chooses to make a paid app, theme or extension, they can also now take and manage any payments they receive from one easy to use place within the developer dashboard. Google’s aim here is at developers. They want to make tings easier for them too, which is why they have implemented these changes. Among everything that’s changed from the developer side of things, publishing apps will also be an easier task right within the development process.

In the grand scheme of things Google is hoping that by making these changes, that they can entice more developers to make their work available through the Web Store and facilitate more spending from the consumer. Chrome OS has seen quite a boom lately from the success of the Chromebooks, and paid apps and themes are fairly popular on Android so why should Chrome OS and the Web Store be any different? The longer these changes have been in place, the easier it will be to see if more people are willing to pay for things like that on their PCs.

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Flappy Bird May Eventually Make a Return

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Flappy Bird has already become one of the biggest stories of 2014, vanishing from app stores almost as fast as its meteoric rise in popularity. When developer Dong Nguyen removed the highly addictive game from the iOS and Android app stores at the beginning of February, everyone was talking about it. Though Nguyen originally said he took the game down for good, it might not be long before we see Flappy Bird make a return to the App Store and Google Play.

In an interview with Rolling Stone (as reported by Mashable), Nguyen said he’s considering bringing Flappy Bird back. That’s far from the confirmation we imagine a fair few mobile gamers are looking for, but it’s still somewhat encouraging for those who never wanted to see Flappy Bird go away in the first place. Nguyen said in the interview that if he did bring the game back, it might be accompanied by a warning reminding users to take a break every now and then.

Indeed, shortly after Flappy Bird was taken down, Nguyen said that the title was never meant to be the addictive mobile game it eventually became. When Nguyen first developed Flappy Bird, he imagined a game that would be played for a few minutes each session, not one that would make chunks of time suddenly disappear as players attempted to beat their personal records over and over again. While there’s no lack of rumors concerning the “real” reason why Flappy Bird was removed from the world’s largest app stores, that’s the official one – Nguyen didn’t like seeing so many people addicted to his game, so he simply removed it to solve that problem.

Of course, if you had Flappy Bird installed on your device before the purge, you’ve had access to it this entire time. While Nguyen isn’t getting any new downloads of the game, it’s safe to say that he’s still pulling in a fair amount of money from players who continue to chase that elusive high score. The future of Flappy Bird just became a little more unclear, but regardless of what ends up happening, Nguyen is still developing new games. One of those games, Checkonaut, is scheduled to land sometime this month. Would you welcome the return of Flappy Bird?

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Bluestacks GamePop Android Micro Console ‘Pops’ Back Up With New Design

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Remember the Bluestacks GamePop micro game console? No? Neither do we, and that’s because until today there hasn’t been much chatter surrounding the little device that was announced last year in May around the time of Google I/O. Bluestacks is also known for their software program for windows that lets you use Android apps on the PC. With the popularity of consoles like the OUYA and other devices coming to market, Bluestacks wanted to get in on the craze before things got too congested or fizzled out. Once they got this project going they offered pre-order consoles to those that wanted to pay for the sub fee for a year in advance, and well, the rest is history. So far no pre-orders have been fulfilled, but there is a sliver lining as it looks like Bluestacks was utilizing its time to redesign the console from the way that it used to look. Giving it a fresh look might be what it needed to stand out.

To recap, the Bluestacks is a gaming console that is said to be following a different kind of gaming experience than that of the OUYA or others. It’s subscription based, so games are playable any time with the monthly fee of $6.99 you pay to keep the Bluestacks GamePop connected. The console itself is also said to cost $99.99, at least it will once it’s actually available. We’re not sure how we feel about this new look, but if anything it definitely has more of a space saving design to it now that the entire console is made up of an HDMI stick and the controller itself. Tech Crunch describes it as feeling none to impressive, and we would have to agree in that it looks like a fairly cheap plastic remote. The design to us surely looks oddball but it isn’t too far off the beaten path as it kind of fits the shape of the Wiimote for the original Nintendo Wii console.

The console is said to finally be ready to ship to consumers, but also now will be marketed at cable companies as what’s called a grey label product, which would allow companies like Comcast for example to entice subscribers with bundle service packages. What do you think of the new design of the Bluestacks GamePop? The ability to tuck it away behind the TV is a nice touch, but how does the performance fare? We’ll just have to wait and see if we get our hands on one.

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Samsung Announces “Industry’s most advanced” 4GB DDR3 RAM

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If you thought 2GB or 3GB of RAM in your smartphone was enough, Samsung disagrees. They have just announced on their blog today that they are now mass-producing the “industry’s most advanced” 4-gigabit DDR3 RAM memory which is based on the new 20-nanometer process. The new memory will be available for mobile devices and PC’s later on in 2014. Samsung did confirm that some of their upcoming mobile devices will be getting the new chips. But I think it’s a safe bet to say that the Galaxy Note 4 is likely to get it. “Samsung’s new energy-efficient 20-nanometer DDR3 RAM will rapidly expand its market base throughout the IT industry including the PC and mobile markets, quickly moving to mainstream status,” stated Samsung Electronics Executive Vice President of Memory sales and marketing Young-Hyun Jun. He also stated “Samsung will continue to deliver next-generation DRAM and green memory solutions ahead of the competition, while contributing to the growth of the global IT market in close cooperation with our major customers.”

Samsung says the new chip is now 25% more energy efficient than 25-nanometer memory. Samsung also says that they improved manufacturing productivity by 30% compared to the previous models. Samsung is also talking about the way it’s actually making the new memory chips. “Samsung has pushed the envelope of DRAM scaling, while utilizing currently available immersion ArF lithography, in its roll-out of the industry’s most advanced 20-nanometer 4-gigabit DDR3 RAM,” they also stated, “with DRAM memory, where each cell consists of a capacitor and a transistor linked to one another, scaling is more difficult than with NAND flash memory in which a cell only needs a transistor. To continue scaling for more advanced DRAM, Samsung refined its design and manufacturing technologies and came up with a modified double patterning and atomic layer deposition.”

So how about 4GB of RAM on your next Samsung smartphone, or just your next smartphone? Considering we’re seeing laptops and desktops with close to 16GB and 32GB of RAM these days, I don’t think it’s all that surprising to see Samsung pushing out 4GB DDR3 RAM modules. What do you think?

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Instagram Updates to look Less “iOS-ish” – Brings a Flat Design to Android

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In April 2012, Instagram launched on Android. It outraged all the iOS users, in which case we all sat back and chuckled a bit. But we couldn’t help but notice that it looked exactly like the iOS version. Like it was simply a port. Since then we’ve gotten new features, bug fixes, etc., but no real redesign. That was until today. Instagram has just announced that they have pushed an update out to the Play Store – should be available in a couple hours – that brings a huge redesign to the Android app.

The changes, as outlined on their blog, include a faster more responsive app. According to Instagram, your profile screen now loads twice as fast, and they’ve cut the overall app size in half to increase speed throughout Instagram. Which is a big feature that’s great for low-end devices. They’ve made the app cleaner and simplified the visuals throughout the app, making use of valuable screen space for small devices and feature phones and rearranging our design to keep buttons within easy reach as you navigate the app on a larger device.

Basically what Instagram is saying is they finally care about their Android users. Now if only their parent company – Facebook – did the same thing. I’m really liking the UI on the new version of Instagram so far. If you haven’t already grabbed it from the Play Store, I suggest you head that way now and grab the update.

As much as we all use Instagram, It’s nice to see an update to the app. Especially one like this that brings in a flatter UI. The older UI, I was not that much of a fan of. It looked pretty ugly to me, but that’s just my opinion. What does everyone think about the new update to Instagram on Android?

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