Sense 6.0 Update on the way for Existing HTC One Owners

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Make no mistake, there’s a lot of commotion surrounding the New HTC One M8. That commotion is understandable too, since the One M8 has a lot of notable features going for it. However, what if you’re an existing owner of the current HTC One model? Was there any good news for you in today’s HTC presentation? The short answer to that question is “yes.”

The slightly longer version of that answer involves HTC Sense 6.0. HTC has announced that the One M8 will feature Android KitKat wrapped in Sense 6.0, but it won’t be the only phone to get the latest version of HTC’s custom UI. The company has also announced that current HTC One owners will be updated to Sense 6.0 sometime soon, though we don’t know precisely when that will happen. HTC says the update will be available sometime during spring, so in addition to the thawing landscape, HTC owners now have another thing to look forward to in coming months.

The encouraging thing here is that HTC has been making a solid effort to keep users in the loop when it comes to update schedules. So, if HTC didn’t give a date today, that probably means the company itself doesn’t have a clear idea of when updates will begin hitting other devices in the One family. After all, there’s a fair amount of compatibility testing that needs to go into these updates, so it’s probably a good thing that HTC is being a little conservative with the information it gives away at this point in time, lest some HTC users end up disappointed.

However, an HTC update schedule was conveniently leaked yesterday, informing us that the HTC One M7, One Dual Sim, One Max, One Mini, and Butterfly S have all been confirmed to receive the Android 4.4.2 and Sense 6.0 update. The update for the One M7 has been given a May-June release window, while the other four devices are looking at a June-July roll out. Those seem to be the only devices in HTC’s lineup that will be receiving Android 4.4.2 and Sense 6.0, so if you’ve got another phone in your pocket, it might not be the best idea to hold onto much hope. We’ll have more information as it becomes available, so stay tuned.

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HTC Brings Accessories Galore For The HTC One M8

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If you’re planning on picking up a brand new HTC One M8 now that it’s officially available, HTC wants to make sure that you have a good head start at properly accessorizing your brand new phone. Dot View cases were just the beginning as HTC has made sure to not only bring forward some new accessories for the M8, but they have also updated some older ones that were released with last years HTC One, to work with the new device this year. Our personal favorite is the HTC Mini+. It looks like a cordless house phone, but that’s neither here nor there. Once you’re ready and have chosen where you’ll want to get your device from, there is a myriad of new accessories to choose from to go with it.

Of course you’ve already seen the Dot View cases, which are up on HTC’s online store as of now for $50, and they aren’t a bad idea if you want a functional case that provides a similar experience to that of the Samsung S-View flip covers. You can’t buy the Dot View cases just yet, but we’d imagine they’ll be available to purchase soon, and perhaps even sometime today. HTC is also offering two other types of cases to cover and protect your device so as to keep that beautiful brushed metal finish looking nice and smooth. The Double Dip case is making a comeback in the form of a new M8 compatible version, along with a standard flip cover case that doesn’t have the dots on the front for the quick glances at information.

Among those accessories we already listed, the HTC Fetch bluetooth phone tracker will work the M8 now, and the battery bar has been updated to work with the M8 as well. Although we’re not sure if HTC had to really do anything to update the battery bar for compatibility. Besides the Dot View flip cover case, the other new accessory that will be available is the BoomBass bluetooth speaker cube, which is said to be small and portable and support NFC tap to connect, and provide a decent amount of battery life for continuous playback use. HTC will also have car kit accessories available for the M8 so you can dash-mount or windshield-mount the device if you need to for things like GPS navigation. So far we have a price on the Dot View case which we stated above, but we haven’t heard of an official price on the BoomBass speaker cube from HTC just yet. However it seems to be up on Amazon for about $114. Links below.

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Deal: OUYA Drops Price From $99 To $69

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If you were looking for even more of a reason to get an OUYA gaming console, this deal right here is it. The Android powered home game console is normally priced at $99.99 in retail shops like Best Buy, but today’s Gold Box deal through Amazon not only sees that price get chopped by $30, but you also get a free $25 credit for use in the OUYA store for games. What could be better? The OUYA console comes with one controller, the console itself which is sporting a Tegra 3 processor with 8GB of storage space, 1GB of RAM, the a/c adapter, and the HDMI cable to connect it to your TV. It comes with everything you need to get started playing games right away once you receive it and hook it up. More and more games are coming to OUYA and they even recently announced their OUYA everywhere initiative, which should see even more games become OUYA compatible in the future. Don’t miss out on this deal if you were holding off because of the higher price tag.

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OnePlus Keeps Up The Friendly Mocking With This Mornings Comparison To The New HTC One M8

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Just an hour or two before the big HTC announcements were beginning to take place this morning for the new HTC One M8, One Plus continued their campaign to mock and tease other manufacturers products compared to their own. I know this will probably get me flamed, and people will disagree until the day they die, but I personally think One Plus is hilarious for doing this. I think it’s great that they feel confident in their device enough to put out all these mocking ads and images. Despite the fact that they haven’t actually shown us anything tangible we can use to compare devices ourselves, the device on paper looks pretty good from where we’re sitting and we really hope that it delivers on all fronts.

If you happened to miss the image post from earlier this morning when OnePlus themselves threw it up on several social media outlets, the image compares both the latest device from HTC, the all new HTC One M8, against the yet unreleased OnePlus One device that we have heard so much about this past month and a half. OnePlus brazenly and boldly pits their device against HTC’s new phone, from just about every standard that should matter to consumers. They compare the price, the screen size, the cameras, the battery, storage capacity, and even right down to the use of the company logo and where it’s placed. Is OnePlus biting off more than they can chew with all these jokes towards other OEMs? From my personal point of view, no. At least I hope not. I really, really, want the OnePlus One to succeed. The reality though could very well be that their phone may not stack up against the flagships they’ve mocked so openly for weeks.

The new comparison image ad wasn’t the only thing they wanted to bring to our attention this week, as OnePlus gave us our first real time frame of when to expect to see the device in all it’s fabled glory. April 23rd. Yes just towards the end of next month we should or hopefully get to see the Oneplus One unveiled and see how it’s designed, and what all it has under the hood in entirety. Whatever the majority vote is concerning the clout of OnePlus and their first smartphone offering, the price seems extremely enticing considering to boasted specs. What do you all think about this latest joke and?

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Nvidia Shield Gets Price Cut To $150, And The Valve Game Portal Is Coming Soon

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So if you’re an avid gamer and a fan of all things Valve, but haven’t yet picked up an Nvidia Shield, now seems like it might as good of a time as any to consider hopping on that bandwagon as Nvidia has two big announcements concerning the portable Android gaming device today. First, is that they’re dropping the price of the Shield yet again, by another $50, bringing it in under $200. Now it’s starting to look like a device I’d love to have. When the Nvidia Shield first released it was set at a price tag of $299. This wasn’t terrible, but for most people it was just too high to warrant buying one, when you could save an extra $100 and go for the PS4. Now that Nvidia is putting this up for sale for an additional $50 off of the already lowered holiday price of $249.99, it seems much more worth it.

The second big deal with the Nvidia Shield today is that Valve and Nvidia have announced the classic puzzle game Portal will be available for the Nvidia Shield. yes, you heard that right, Portal is coming to the Nvidia Shield. It’s few and far between when we get some extremely great games on Android, and while this one is only going to be Shield compatible right now, it’s still great to see one of the most popular PC games from the last 10 years be made available for a mobile device running Android. Valve has said that this game will be coming soon, which could mean by the end of the week or it could mean next week. Our guess though is that they’ll have it up sometime before the end of this sale for the Nvidia Shield goes away. So we could wait up to a month before we see it, as the sale isn’t over till the end of April.

Hopefully we’ll start to see some other major titles from Valve come to Shield and we would hope the Play Store as well, which we would personally want to include Portal 2, and Team Fortress 2, just to name a couple. We also won’t judge Nvidia if they want to drop the price of the Shield even more to a cool $150, which would really make that device sell like hotcakes. While it doesn’t look like Amazon will be getting the price drop to $199 for the Shield unit, if you can’t wait and want to get it as quickly as possible through say, Amazon Prime, you can do so by hitting the link below. Is anyone else as excited as we are about these two announcements?

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Tech21 Unveils Two Of Their HTC One M8 Cases And Screen Guard

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With the new HTC One M8 having had its official announcement earlier, it seems the flood gates have opened and we’ll probably begin to see plenty of accessories and cases get unveiled today. We’ve seen the Dot View cases show up on HTC’s online retail store for $49.99, and now Tech21, a company that specializes in cases that provide good protection to your device from drops and damage, has just unveiled that they have two cases and a screen guard available for purchase for the new HTC flagship smartphone. For those that have never used a Tech21 case before, they provide a pretty good amount of protection from drops as all of them are shock resistant, but not all of the Tech 21 cases are equal. With that said, expect these new Tech21 cases for the new One M8 to protect the phone just fine, especially if you pair it with a screen guard.(personally, I’m over the screen guards myself)

If you’re someone that prefers to have as much protection as possible but hate to bulk up your device with a few extra layers of thick composite, you should definitely give these new Tech21 cases a look. These new cases for the M8 are the Impact Tactical and the Impact Shell case, and just like all Tech21 cases, they’re made with the special D30 material inside of them which is what gives the cases that added layer of protection. Whether you’re someone that prefers to have a more standard looking case or you like the choice of having color options for that little bit of flare but without skimping on the protection, the Impact Shell or the Impact Tactical will work to keep your tech protected. The way the D30 stuff works is that the D30 molecules interlock with each other and push absorbed force away from your device, keeping your phone as protected as possible.

That sounds all well and good but what if you’re someone that’s worried about the beauty and integrity of your brand new display? That’s where the Tech21 Impact Shield can come in handy. It’s a transparent self-healing screen protector shield that can keep your screen from receiving any sort of nasty scratches or scuffs. So if you drop your phone, or place it in the same pockets as keys or change or other abrasive things, the Impact Shield will keep your screen looking nice and new. All three products will cost you $34.99 each, although right now it looks like only the Impact Shell and Impact Tactical cases show up on the site for the M8.

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Google Reportedly Focusing on Enterprise Apps, Better Encryption and Other ‘Business’ Features in Next Android Release

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Today might be all about the HTC One M8, but that doesn’t stop rumors about the next version of Android. We’re hearing today that in the next major version of Android – specifically the “L” release – Google is working on more business friendly features like data encryption and Enterprise Apps. According to sources cited by The Information, Sundar Pichai and his team are also working on some API’s for the new version of Android. Basically what it looks like is that Google wants to get all those Blackberry users that won’t or can’t leave Blackberry because of how secure it is for business phones.

This new initiative is said to really boost the security of Android, including storing data directly on chips, and making the data more secure. Which this can be a good thing for more than just business users, but casual users too. As I’m sure it’ll also help keep those viruses and malware out that I keep hearing about – I’ve never had a virus on any Android phone. The new APIs are said to allow you to remotely access your device and do things like wipe it or access data from it. Sort of like remote desktop for your Mac or PC, but for Android. Which would actually be pretty cool, but I think it’d be better on a tablet than a smartphone.

Finally, there is said to be a separate approval processor enterprise apps so that we have secure apps for enterprise users. It’ll be a bit more tough to get an enterprise app into the Play Store than a regular app. Which is to be sure there’s no malware in there or anything. Which is something I’ve wanted Google to do for quite some time now.

This is all expected to be part of the next version of Android which we are expecting to see at Google I/O in June, and should be named after something with the letter L, as this is the “L” release. It’ll be interesting to see what else Google has up their sleeve for this next version of Android.

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