Word on the street has it that Best Buy has issued a recall for up to 5,100 units of MacBooks, especially after a recent spate of reports that some MacBook replacement batteries have caught fire. Good thing those torched MacBooks did not happen to cause any potentially fatal situations, but why wait until something terrible happens when prevention is clearly better than the cure in this case? According to AP, Best Buy started to contact customers individually and asked them if they would be more than happy to accept a battery replacement, or if they are willing to take their chances, to receive a Best Buy gift card for the value of the replacement battery instead.

Best Buy issued a statement as well which reads, “Best Buy Co. is voluntarily recalling both black and white ATG lithium-ion replacement batteries for the notebook computers. The batteries were sold online or shipped to customers through its Geek Squad services from September of 2008 through June of 2012 for about $50.”

So far, a total of 13 reports have been sent to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, touting that the Best Buy batteries happen to catch fire, with one consumer having suffered from a serious leg burn. Would you choose a Best Buy gift card over a battery replacement?

They say that a picture speaks a thousand words, so in a short clip of five seconds or so, you can more or less cram in a few thousand words with ease. Extremely short videos seem to be catching on these days, with online services such as Instagram having reported that they would be debuting a spanking new video product tomorrow. What is Vine going to do then? Obviously, the folks over at Vine are not going to sit back, fold their arms and legs and bury their heads in the sand. No sir, it seems that Vine has a repartee already ready to get going, by teasing upcoming features and design tweaks via short Vine clips, with one of the examples being shown above.

Co-founders Dom Hofmann and Rus Yusupov have already posted a couple of Vines which do seem to drop clues about some new additions in Vine, such as the ability to record multiple Vines simultaneously as well as save draft copies of Vines. We do hope that these new features will deliver some vintage Vine videos down the road, instead of ending up with a dud.

The advancement of technology in the modern day and age has seen many changes among humanity, with most of them benefitting us rather than being detrimental. 3D printing is one of those areas that have proved to be beneficial, and you could more or less lump Prevoteau Mathieu’s Pentax prototype under that category. This prototype would rely on a 3D printer in order to produce a small model of items that you photograph. Imagine snapping a photo of flowers, where hooking up the camera to the printer would result in a 3D printed version of the very same flowers that you captured digitally.

In a way, these 3D printed photos will be able to be touched and felt by the visually impaired, giving them a visual picture on what kind of flower you have just captured, instead of relying on plain words to describe them. This Pentax camera prototype also encourages the visually impaired to explore their inner photographer skills, as it comes with a large button that makes snapping photos a cinch, in addition to logo-based adjustable camera settings that make photo tweaking a simple affair.

I suppose if a movie was made about the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3, there is another sequel in store, where it will be titled “Return of the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3”. Why do we call it so? For starters, it has made yet another appearance on the FCC despite doing so back in April, except that back then, the Galaxy Mega 6.3 was approved with AT&T supported HSPA+ bands. This time around, the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3’s approval by the FCC shows that the device will now be able to hook up to AT&T’s LTE network.

What do you think of a LTE-enabled version of the Galaxy Mega 6.3? It remains to be seen whether Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra, which has been rumored to come with a 6.44” display, will be able to provide more than a decent challenge to the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3, but in the meantime, if you are looking for a reasonably sized phablet with pedigree, the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is not too bad of a choice to begin with. Alternatively, how about holding out for the Samsung Galaxy Note 3?

Every company would go through various stages of growth, from a slow and steady to an explosive one, hitting a plateau, before some either go to the next level or experience a reversal in fortunes. Samsung obviously cannot remain at the top forever, and not even with a flagship model like the Galaxy S4, it cannot remain at the top of the sales charts forever. Word on the street has it that Samsung’s Mobile Division has now lowered the number of July components order to a mere 6.5 million Galaxy S4 units, which is a rather significant drop compared to May’s figures of 12.2 million.

It was just a few weeks prior that Samsung sang a different tune, where they managed to ship 10 million units of the Galaxy S4 in a record 26 days after launch, shattering previous records and increasing future expectations. I suppose this also means that the Samsung Galaxy S3 is set to retire soon, which is a good idea after all since the Galaxy S3 is still doing pretty well, and could eat into the Galaxy S4’s sales figures. It looks like the likes of the HTC One and Xperia Z are starting to spice things up in the flagship smartphone arena.

Androidly is said to offer the first full featured Android smart watch in the world, and such a lofty claim certainly needs some looking into. Anyone out there care to dispute that? The Androidly smart watch does not make or receive calls only, but it even comes with a 2” capacitive touchscreen display which should be able to cater for text messages, emails, music, and games, among others. Granted, 2” might seem relatively small to go through lengthy emails, but remember how much smaller older mobile phones were where their screen sizes are concerned?

Other hardware configurations of the Androidly smart watch include a 2-megapixel camera, GPS support, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and a male USB port that is located at the end of the watch strap, with Androidly claiming this to also be the smallest Android-powered device in the world. Heck, it is also the first timepiece in the world that has full access to the Google Play Store. Depending on how much you pledge at the moment, the Androidly smart watch will cost you anywhere from $229 to $269.

Another day, another tablet is introduced to the masses, and this time around, it will be one from the Android stable with E FUN’s Nextbook Premium 8HD. This will be an 8” tablet which will surely add more spice to this particular market segment, where it runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean right out of the box with Google Play right out of the box, is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz Cortex A9 processor, carries 1GB RAM and aided by 8GB of internal memory. Just in case you find that to be insufficient for your media heavy use, there is always a microSD memory card slot to carry around additional information. Integrated Wi-Fi connectivity, a HDMI out port, and dual webcams round off the list of hardware specifications.

The E FUN Nextbook Premium 8HD can be yours now from over 2,500 Walmart stores, and if you are an avid supporter of online shopping, that can be done via Walmart.com, too. The asking price? A relatively cheap $99.99 a pop. Bear in mind that this is no high definition tablet, as it maxes out at 1,024 x 768 resolution, which should be enough to satisfy those who are about to get their feet wet in the tablet environment.

Now that the Snapdragon 800 chip has been officially revealed to the world (check our 800 Benchmark numbers), partners are lining up to announce that upcoming handsets will continue using this family of products. Although unofficial, the word on the street is that an Snapdragon 800 version of the Galaxy S4 is in the works, and LG is now telling the world that the next “G” phone will feature this new chip.
Read full post →LG G-Series Smartphones To Get Snapdragon 800

Just yesterday it was reported that perhaps Huawei was open to the idea of buying Nokia, however today the company denied having any such plans. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft was seriously considering acquiring Nokia, the two reportedly had serious talks, which apparently fell through just recently. Last year when Nokia’s acquisitions rumors were a dime a dozen, Microsoft was said to be interested even then. Both Microsoft and Nokia have declined to comment on this report.

The publication claims that both companies were close to an “oral agreement” regarding a deal. Microsoft is said to have walked away primarily because of the price and Nokia’s insignificant position in the global smartphone market. Nokia doesn’t even rank in the top three smartphone manufacturers, while Microsoft obviously wants substantial growth for Windows Phone . Nokia has a pretty strong position when it comes to feature phones, but Microsoft doesn’t seem to be interested in that, those devices can’t run Redmond’s mobile platform. Nevertheless, as part of a billion dollar deal, Nokia’s smartphones run exclusively on Windows Phone. It seems to have paid off as well, considering that Nokia Lumia 920 is the best selling Windows Phone device out there.

In what is being called as one of the biggest backtracks in gaming history, it has been officially announced that Xbox One internet connection requirement and DRM related to used games has been rescinded. Microsoft had previously said that users would have to connect their consoles to the internet at least once every 24 hours, this was apparently required to prevent game piracy. Offline gaming would be disabled if users did not connect to the internet. That requirement has now been lifted. Now after a one-time set-up with Xbox One, any disc based game can be played without ever having to connect the console to the internet.

Microsoft also says that users can now trade-in, gift, resell, lend and rent disc based games like they do today on Xbox 360. It says in the official blog post that “there will be no limitations to using and sharing games.” Downloaded titles can obviously not be shared, but sharing of games will work just like it does today. These announcements were made by Don Mattrick, Xbox head at Microsoft, who says that the company has made these changes after listening to feedback from customers. There was much hue and cry when these policies were announced, and Sony was praised quite a bit for not going down this road with PlayStation 4. Gamers rejoice, Xbox One is now officially free of the policies that bothered you.