Electronic Arts has announced today that it is going to release Need for Speed Rivals for Xbox One and PS4. Before it gets released for both of these unreleased consoles, Need for Speed Rivals will be rolled out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on the 19th of November, 2013. The game promises to offer an exhilarating experience, the player may decide to play either as a cop or a racer. After choosing sides, the objective is pretty clear. Cops chase racers, racers evade the cops.

EA explains that the new NFS game comes with AllDrive, a new online feature that will allow players to seamlessly transition between playing with friends to playing alone. This will seemingly blur the line between multi-player and single player, with friends being able to enter or exit races whenever they please.  Need for Speed Rivals has been built on the Frostbite 3 engine, the very same engine that Battlefield 4 has been built on. It can not be said for now whether EA’s newest Need for Speed game will actually be the launch title for either the Xbox One or the PS4.

Unreleased and unannounced devices appear prominently on our radar when they turn up for the customary stop at the Federal Communications Commission or FCC. This agency’s approval is required before such a device can be sold in the U.S.A. It look like Asus currently has a premium Android powered tablet under the wraps. A K005 Asus tablet has been spotted in a FCC filing and its touting the Snapdragon S4 Pro processor. Obviously there are no clues in the filing itself that point towards its release.

It is speculated that this unreleased tablet is approximately 10 inches, based on the sketch that has been provided to the FCC. K005 is obviously not going to be the name under which it will be released to the public, though there haven’t been any rumors of a new Asus tablet or of the moniker that it may have. Apart from the 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chip, the filing reveals that there will also be a 6,560 mAh battery. Additional details about the specifications are currently not available. While we’re speculating, perhaps Asus is prepping this tablet for release around the holiday season?

It has only been a couple of weeks since BlackBerry Live 2013 conference took place. The company announced there that it was releasing the much awaited BlackBerry 10.1 OS update, apart from announcing a new mid-range smartphone. While most users might still be in the process of updating their devices, some details about the next major update of BB10 OS have already been shared by BlackBerry Product Manager Michael Clewley.

Michael makes it clear that BlackBerry 10.2 OS update is going to be released later this year, which makes it two major updates in one calendar year. Some of the new changes that he mentions include support for standard unicode Emojis, multiple alarms and level 1 notifications for email. Level 1 notifications are actually special notifications or keywords that can be added for any email address, they’re essentially custom alerts. Michael also confirms that OS 10.2 will also bring the ability for users to set a time to remember an item. There’s no expected release time frame for this upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS update, it is likely that we will hear rumors regarding this over the next couple of months.

Today, Hisense held a press event in New York in which they introduced a couple of tablets. The more powerful one (in a relative way) is the Sero 7 Pro, which is a 7-inch tablet that uses a 720p (1280×720) IPS display and a Tegra 3 processor (1.3GHz, T30 model with 1GB of RAM). Hisense has announced that the Sero 7 Pro will ship with Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), 8GB of internal storage and a 4000mAh battery capacity. The rest of the specs are fairly standard.
Read full post →Hisense Sero 7 Pro And Sero LT Tablets Aggressively Priced

Bungie already announced Destiny, a new first person shooter game that is going to be released for both Xbox and PlayStation. Destiny has been slated for release in 2014 and it has been confirmed that the game will be compatible with future consoles as well. The newly revealed Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 will be getting this game, both of these consoles are expected to be released later this year. The story line of Destiny is not known, no details about the gameplay are available as yet. Bungie has a “worldwide gameplay reveal” scheduled for 10th June, at Sony’s E3 press conference, so additional details about the game aren’t that far off.

Today Bungie released a new Destiny trailer that it has created with the likes of Giancarlo Esposito of Breaking Bad fame and the director of Iron Man, Jon Favreau. The teaser trailer tells little about the game, though its definitely worth taking a look at. There are high expectations from Bungie for this game, considering that it already has the credit for the highly successful Halo games trilogy under its belt.

We often juggle multiple tabs or windows during our browsing sessions, and its quite easy to overlook a chat window or notification that is popping up outside of the window currently being used. Today Google has released a new beta update of Chrome browser for Windows and Chrome OS, this update brings a richer notifications experience outside the browser. Google says these notifications have been designed to be useful, engaging and beautiful. They can display formatted images and texts, and are also capable of supporting direct actions such as replying to an email from within the notification itself.

There’s also a notification center that will house all missed notifications, catching up on them require you to simply open up this center. There’s also the ability to disable notifications from any particular source, such as Gmail or Google Calendar whenever the user desires. Not only does it look good, it is definitely a useful feature. The latest Chrome beta for Windows and Chrome OS is now available for download. Google says that support for Mac as well as Linux is on the way.

Today Apple has officially confirmed that their WWDC 2013 keynote will be taking place on the 10th of June. That is the day when Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off. Traditionally Apple has always conducted its keynote presentation on the conference’s first day, so this announcement hardly comes as a surprise. The company hasn’t revealed a list of speakers who will be taking the stage, but we can expect to see the usual high level executives on stage after CEO Tim Cook formally opens up the keynote.

A lot has already been rumored about what Apple will possibly unveil at the event. We’re heard rumors of new iPhones and iPads being announced to the possibility of seeing a new and refreshed MacBook line up. What we do know for sure is that the company will be keeping focus on iOS 7 and the next major update of OS X. This year tickets for the WWDC sold out under three minutes, establishing a new record. As of now there’s no confirmation regarding the live stream of the keynote, though Apple will be offering a live stream of the technical sessions.

HTC First’s and Facebook Home’s problems have been well chronicled over the past few weeks. Apart from getting sued by Eminem’s publisher, Facebook’s new Home on Android hasn’t been doing as well as the company had hoped. It has also taken its toll on the HTC First smartphone, which happens to be the first smartphone to ship with Home pre-installed. We had recently reported a rumor that this smartphone was going to be discontinued, it seemed possible as AT&T slashed its price from $99 on contract to merely $0.99. While it continues to sell in the U.S., the smartphone’s U.K. release has been put off indefinitely.

Facebook says in a statement that it is now focusing on adding new customization features to Home in the next couple of months. They say that they have “recommended holding off” the UK HTC First launch, though adding that they’re committed to bringing the latest mobile experiences to their customers. So as the smartphone’s future in the Kingdom looks bleak, those across the pond who wish to try out Facebook Home can do so if they have any one of the supported devices, for which Home can be downloaded from Google Play Store.

It isn’t far-fetched to think if Microsoft actually plans on integrating its Windows Phone platform with the newly unveiled Xbox One in some way. As a matter of fact, the likelihood of such an integration seeing the light of day has greatly increased. Microsoft’s senior marketing manager, Greg Sullivan, has said that the “general idea of an increased seamlessness and integration across these elements is a goal.” He also says that despite the fact that Microsoft didn’t even mention Windows Phone at the Xbox One unveil, that doesn’t mean “there’s nothing that’s being worked on.”

Unfortunately Greg didn’t reveal more than just these subtle hints. So obviously one can’t say for sure when exactly we’ll see this interaction formally be revealed. Greg also said that Windows Phone is an evidence of “great cross-divisional collaboration at Microsoft” and that the company aims to continue improving it. The Windows Phone platform is doing considerably well in the marketing, considering how it snapped up the third place title from BlackBerry recently. The idea isn’t outright impossible, though there aren’t any hints about the level of integration between these two platforms.

Google, the maestros of search, has certainly done their bit to further enhance the Google search experience on your email, where it will soon be made possible for everyone living in the US to be able to perform an instant search on relevant emails, Google Drive files, and Calendar events among others each time you decide to perform a search in Gmail. Of course, this particular feature did not come about just like that, as this was not an idea pulled out of thin air, but rather, it has been tested in recent months via a trial, and apparently, those “lab rats” so to speak have fallen in love with the time-saving convenience of being able to search for the entire slew of items from a single place.

Throughout the coming week, this particular search feature will rollout to all US users (affecting searches in English only for now), so if you happen to live in the land of the free and home of the brave, be patient if you have yet to enjoy this particular feature. [Press Release]