Thursday, March 27, 2014

Otterbox Announces their Popular Defender and Commuter Cases for the HTC One (M8)



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Otterbox is known for having pretty durable cases. In fact, there are some people who swear by their cases. Which is great because they are really great cases, even though they normally make your device pretty bulky – which is the main reason that I’m not the biggest fan of them. The Defender line of cases is their bigger case which has a built-in screen protector as well as a holster. So naturally its the most expensive version as well. For the HTC One M8 it’s going for $59.90, and the Commuter is a bit smaller, and so is the price-tag at just $39.90. Otterbox is also selling the parts of these cases individually, so you can choose your own colors for your device, instead of being stuck with 2-3 pre-made color combinations like they’ve done in the past. Which is pretty awesome too.


For the Defender, the Slipcover is going for $24.95, the plastic shell for $34.95, and the holster for $14.95. So obviously it’s going to cost more than just buying the Defender case all in one. But this is for those that need to replace a part of their case, or looking for a second color so you can change the color from day to day. Which is pretty cool, but I’m not sure how many people will take advantage of that. Onto the Commuter, the slipcover is $24.95 and the plastic shell is $19.95.


While the HTC One M8 has been rendered unrepairable by iFixit already, it’s a good idea to pick up one of these Otterbox cases for your new HTC One M8 anyways. Which you can grab from Otterbox or Amazon (Commuter link and Defender link). There’s also some great cases from other manufacturers like Incipio, Spigen and many other popular ones out there. Let us know in the comments below what cases you plan on picking up for the HTC One M8.


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NBA 2K14 Is No Longer A Kindle Fire Exclusive, Play Store Access Unlocked



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Everyone hates exclusivity of game titles on mobile platforms. Well, except for those who use the device it’s exclusive to. For the rest of us though, it can be a little bit of a let down when we aren’t given the same treatment as certain other devices. For example, the Kindle Fire and 2K games NBA 2K14. For a while it has been available on Android exclusively for the Amazon Kindle Fire, which has left a throng of devices that could easily support the game without the capability to play it. For the sports game fans, this is probably a long time coming. If you have long been a fan of the NBA 2K series, now is your chance to finally get this game on your Android device as the Kindle Fire exclusivity has been kicked to the curb and is now up in the Play Store for anyone to download. It does require Android 4.0 and up, but then again there aren’t as many devices out there that aren’t at least on ICS now anyways.


If you’ve been waiting to get your dunk on you can do so by navigating to the Play Store through this link, and purchasing NBA 2K14 for $7.99. That price might seem a bit high and that’s because it is a little more than your standard game on Android. However higher priced premium games are becoming more common and for something like this it was to be expected. Like with any big name game title from a major game studio, the game is a huge download so make sure to clear some space out on your device. The size of the game is 1.1GB, so a few hundred MB of open device storage over that is a good place to start if you want to download and play. The game says it boasts intuitive touch controls, with two supported control modes, called classic, and one finger. Lack of gamepad support is a tiny letdown as well, but we’ll cross our fingers that it will come in a future update, just like we’re hoping for with Deus Ex: The Fall.



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Featured: Supertooth Disco4 Bluetooth Speaker Review



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Back at CES in January, Supertooth announced a brand new Bluetooth Speaker of theirs. That is the Disco4. I’ve reviewed the Disco Twin last year as well as the Supertooth Freedom headphones, and I loved them both. So here comes the Disco4 which features NFC for Tap-to-Pair as well as Bluetooth 4.0. As you can tell, it’s a pretty large Bluetooth speaker, especially compared to the others that I’ve reviewed recently. This one boasts about 8 watts, and a bass reflex system. It also has a rather large battery inside which promises up to 12 hours of playback.


While I was using it for the past week or so, I was able to get about 10-12 hours of playback having it pair both to my laptop and smartphone. The sound was pretty good coming from it as well, which you can see from the review video down below. The Disco4 comes in plenty of colors as well, obviously I have the purple one here – which I actually like the color of this one. It’s available in black, gray, white, purple and red. It’s not all that heavy either, it weighs about the same as the Ultimate Ears Boom speaker. What I really like though, is that it has a handle on top for when you want to carry it around, since it is a rather large Bluetooth speaker, comparatively.


I’ve been very pleased with the Supertooth Disco4 Bluetooth Speaker, which I honestly didn’t expect anything less. The best part about it, is the price. It’s only $49, which is a really good price in my opinion. Generally Bluetooth speakers that are this good are usually over $100, so seeing it at just $49 is almost an impulse buy. I’ve been keeping the Disco4 on my desk underneath my mounted monitor and it works great and looks great as well. Definitely better than the speakers that are integrated into my laptop.


For those interested, the Disco4 is available from Supertooth’s website for $49.


Video Review


Click here to view the embedded video.


Gallery


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Cast Screen Tile Appears In Quick Settings Panel For Some Users



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We’ve all been waiting for native Chromecast support to pop up in the whole of the Android OS, as opposed to just a button within certain apps. For a little while we have been seeing signs here and there about the possible feature coming to devices in the future, but nothing concrete as of yet to confirm what it would be exactly or when it would show its face. Thanks to some tipsters who alerted Android Police to this peculiar tile that had shown up in their quick settings panel, we have at least some proof that Google is working on something to be baked into the OS for use with the Chromecast. While it is great that this tip came in and we were able to see it for ourselves, there aren’t really any details on the feature so unfortunately we have nothing official to share with you. We can however speculate on what we think it might be or what we’d hope it to provide once Google makes this come alive.


We(and by we I really mean me, on a massive scale) are hoping that this tile will eventually work and allow us to cast our screens to the Chromecast to mirror the display. There are infinite reasons why this would be a huge thing for many users, but the only one I’m really interested in is the capability to play games on the big screen while using a gamepad. I know there are many other practical uses for it, but they don’t interest me, Dead Trigger 2 on a huge TV though, I can get behind that. As of right now, we were informed that this tile only surfaces at certain times, which makes sense as I haven’t seen it show up personally. It was also mentioned that the tile doesn’t actually do anything, as it just crashes when trying to connect to Chromecast.


Could this possibly be the native Android screen mirroring with Chromecast that we have been wanting for so long? We can only hope. Will it come sooner than later? We would love for that to be the case. As soon as some more evidence comes to light about this possibility, we’ll be sure to post our findings. Until now we’re stuck with mirroring by other means.


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Readly Now Available in the UK; All You Can Read Magazines for £9.99 a Month



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As one of the few UK members of staff, it was hard to see Google Play Magazines go live in the US before we got it, and even harder still to see a poor selection of magazines make it to the UK Play Store. Since then though, things have gotten quite a bit better, and some of my personal favorites – like PC Gamer, The Week and more – are available in the UK Play Magazines. Still though, it’s always nice to have an alternative and seeing as Zinio still leaves a lot to be desired, it’s more the merrier when it comes to getting magazines on Android.


Readly is a new service that’s just launched in the UK, it’s been around in the US and Sweden for sometime now and the best way of describing it to my fellow Englishman, is that it’s the Spotify of magazines. With a selection of magazines ranging from Amateur Photographer to What Hi-Fi, there’s something for everyone on offer and you can read as much as you like for £9.99 a month. It’s the all you can eat of subscriptions folks, and there’s a free trial on offer as well. With 216 English titles available, there should at least be a handful of magazines you’d like to read. I’m quite partial to What Hi-Fi but then again, that’s just me.


You can go ahead and sign up for an account at the Readly website and it’s available on iOS devices (for those troublesome significant others), Kindle Fire and of course Android. You can have up to five devices connected to any one account, so this could be something for all the family, depending on what sort of content you find in Readly’s library. This sort of model has proven very popular in the UK when it comes to Music and Movies, with the likes of Google Play Music and Netflix gaining subscribers every day, there’s little to suggest it can’t work for magazines, either.


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Samsung Galaxy TabPRO 10 1 Unboxing





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Amazon Sends out Invites for April 2nd Event; Could the Set-Top Box Finally Be Unveiled?



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There have been rumors of a set-top box from Amazon for a few years now. And now we have an invitation for an event going down next week. Which could be the set-top box, as it’s still a bit early for a Kindle/Kindle Fire refresh. The invite from Amazon simply reads “Join us for an update on our Video business” which pretty much hints at something like a set-top box, which could be tied into Amazon Prime’s increase we saw earlier this month.


The event starts at 11am EST on April 2nd. As usual, we’ll be covering it to be sure we’re not missing anything. Hopefully we’ll see their set-top box which has been rumored almost more than the HTC One. It’s said to work a bit like Chromecast and be able to stream games from the cloud using Amazon’s cloud services. Which is a pretty cool idea, I just wonder how well it’ll work, especially for those on slower connections. As I’m sure the ping for multi-player games would be pretty bad for most games.


We could speculate all day long, and we probably will until next week, but the fact of the matter is that Amazon has something to show us next week and it’s plain and simple about their video business. Hopefully we see some more goodies in Amazon Prime Instant Video as it’s been pretty lame as far as content goes, at least for stuff I’d watch. How many of you are looking forward to seeing what Amazon launches or announces next week at their event? Hopefully their set-top box or something similar, we’re still looking for something to take over our living room, which Chromecast is close, but not quite there. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.


Amazon: Kindle Fire Lineup


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