It was just yesterday when we brought you news on how Sprint has decided to bring DISH Networks to court, in addition to Clearwire as well concerning DISH Networks’ potential acquisition of Clearwire in what Sprint deems to be an illegal move. Having said that, DISH Networks has issued a statement concerning the Sprint lawsuit as you can read verbatim below.

“Sprint’s lawsuit is a transparent attempt to divert attention from its failure to deal fairly with Clearwire’s shareholders, as well as to exploit its majority position to block Clearwire’s shareholders from receiving a fair price for their shares. DISH is confident that its superior offer, which has been unanimously recommended by the Clearwire Board, including the majority appointed by Sprint, will be upheld and Clearwire shareholders will be free to realize the 29 percent premium represented by the DISH offer.”

Who do you think will be able to come out tops with this lawsuit? We do hope that the entire situation will clear up sooner rather than later, so that consumers will be able to get on with the rest of their lives.

As we are heading into the final two quarters of 2013 during which a new generation of mobile devices is going to be launched, and many of them will be undoubtedly powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 chip. We knew this was coming and Qualcomm gave us some performance hints at CES, saying that Snapdragon 800 will provide 50% higher graphics performance when compared to Snapdragon 600, which is currently used in nearly all the most popular Android devices like the Galaxy S4 (except for some regions), the HTC One or the LG Optimus G Pro.

Today, we had an opportunity to play with MDP development smartphones and tablets, and we jumped on the chance to run some performance numbers. Since there’s no “design” or device “body” to review, all our attention went to “how fast” sub-components are.

It should be reminded that none of the synthetic benchmarks will provide a proper picture of the final “user experience”, but it is clear that there is a strong correlation between how powerful computers are and how good of an experience they can enable. The raw numbers below, but first here’s a quick overview of the specs.:

Snapdragon 800 Specifications

Inside, there are four Krait 400 CPU cores (2.3GHZ max) that work alongside an Adreno 330 GPU and and Hexagon QDSP6 DSP. Instead of using small cores (BIG.Little style), Qualcomm has chosen to use a dynamic CPU power control that lets it tune the power consumption/performance ratio in an finer fashion than core-switching would allow. This and the LPDDR3 memory are the main sub-systems that are going to be stressed in typical benchmarks.

The numbers are in!

Geekbench 2 is a math-oriented benchmark is that used to show how fast CPU cores can solve math problems. This is really a crunching-number game that does not really mimic real-world applications, but it is usually a decent indicator of how fast CPU cores are.

Interestingly, the Snapdragon 800 and NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 are running neck to neck. Although the numbers we got show a tiny advantage for the Tegra 4 reference platform, the difference is within the typical margin of error, so we’ll call this one even. It can be surprising that Qualcomm scores so well against ARM’s mighty A15 design, and this is a testament to how good Qualcomm at designing CPU cores. We would love to see which architecture consumes more power at peak performance, but this remains uncertain for now.

Antutu 3.x is a system benchmark that tries to assign an overall score to the whole machine. It does this  by running a number of sub-benchmarks and computes a global score. Here, the speed of the storage and memory sub-systems do play an important role, so it is critical to test this again on actual products when they come out. In the battle of reference designs, Tegra 4 comes out slightly on top in the global score and cracks the 35000 points, which is impressive.

Next, we’re testing the graphics capabilities of the Snapdragon 800, and just like Qualcomm predicted, it offers about 50% more performance than today’s fastest smartphones (!). Many will be surprised that Snapdragon 800 scores a clear win against NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 in GLBenchmark 2.5 and I suspect that it is a slightly better triangle setup rate, but we will revisit that when we get our hands on a production unit of SHIELD. We didn’t have a Tegra 4 device on hand to test BaseMark X, but it is probable the outcome would be comparable. In terms of graphics speed, Snapdragon 800 takes the lead in those tests.

Conclusion

Qualcomm had the Snapdragon 800 design up-and-running for a while, but the company wanted to have all its software development tools and SDKs ready before it starts to reveal the raw performance numbers. Qualcomm points out that it’s the “whole system” that counts and it many ways, they are completely right. Still, raw synthetic numbers show us what the “speed of light” is and hopefully software developers will be able to extract all that power, at least, that’s what every one of us expect from the apps we buy.

When actual devices will come out, it looks like Snapdragon 800 will fare very well performance-wise -especially for gaming-, but the most important parts is that it comes with an integrated 4G LTE modem that has been qualified by the biggest carriers, and this is an undeniable business advantage over the competition. If you have been waiting for Q3/Q4 to upgrade your smartphone, you can smile, because this is very good…

Rockstar Games has announced via Twitter that Max Payne 3, developed by Rockstar Studios, is going to be released on June 20th for Mac. This is the third game in Max Payne franchise, the third iteration was first released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in May last year. A month after that, it was released for Windows. Now almost a year down the road, they’re finally released it for Mac users. The story line revolves obviously around Max Payne, the character that players will assume, as he tried to escape his troubled past by moving to São Paulo to protect a wealthy family.

Max Payne 3 for Mac will require Mac OS X 10.7.5, an Intel dualcore Xeon or Core i series processor of 2.4GHz or higher, NVIDIA 8800GT 512MB VRAM or AMD Radeon HD 4870 512VRAM, 32GB of space on the hard disk and 4GB of RAM. Rockstar says that the game features “advanced new Bullet Time and Shootdodge effects, full integration of Natural Motion’s Euphoria Character Behavior system for like-like movement” apart from a “dark and twisted story.” The price tag of Max Payne 3 for Mac has not been disclosed yet.

We’ve seen a lot of alleged iPhone 5S components being leaked over the past few months. Today we pick up on pictures of what is apparently the display assembly of iPhone 5S, it has been leaked merely a day after we saw a purported iPhone 5S logic board online. Now many believe that these leaks are signs pointing towards ongoing production on Apple’s next generation iPhone, that seems plausible, considering that this device is expected to be unveiled this September.

This components adds substance to the rumors that iPhone 5S will not have any major design changes. While it has been rumored that this smartphone may come with a larger display, perhaps a 5 inch one, but this alleged display assembly tells a completely different story. This part also reportedly fits the logic board we featured yesterday, which hinted that there might be minor changes made to the internal hardware. All of this is pure speculation, there’s no way of telling if these components actually belong to Apple’s upcoming iPhone. We’ll know for sure only when Apple makes the official iPhone 5S announcement. [Image via Macrumors]

Two very popular Android smartphones, the Galaxy S4 and HTC One, both have ‘Google Edition‘ or ‘Nexus Experience‘ variants out in the market. These variants don’t come with any major hardware changes, rather they simply run on stock Android as opposed to manufacturer modified versions, which include skins such as TouchWiz and Sense. Huawei announced its Ascend P6 smartphone earlier today and ruled out releasing a ‘Nexus Experience’ version of it. Instead it praises its Emotion UI, saying that they have made “hundreds of improvements” over Google’s stock Android UI.

Richard Yu, Chairman at Huawei made these comments at the Ascend P6 launch event in London. He says that the company’s Emotion UI will be much more attuned to the user’s “emotions.” Such claims are made by all manufacturers, who claim that their own skins are much better than the user interface of stock Android. Emotion UI brings a different launcher and icons as well as various themes to the Ascend P6. So while Samsung and HTC may have deemed it feasible to embrace stock Android, Huawei seems to be sticking solely to its guns.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Samsung President Shin Jong Kyun, according to Bloomberg, and discussed possible partnerships with between the world’s biggest social network and one of the world’s biggest smartphone vendor. They also discussed the state of IT industry, Zuckerberg left without answering any questions, while Shin reportedly answered some outside Samsung’s offices in South Korea. Facebook has also not released any official comment regarding Zuckerberg’s meeting with Samsung.

One of the partnerships that both of them discussed reportedly includes boosting ad sales for Facebook from mobile devices, Samsung is in a good position to deliver on that, considering that it sells a phenomenal number of smartphones and tablets around the globe. Zuckerberg also met President of South Korea Park Geun Hye for half an hour, in which he discussed possibilities related to promoting technology startups in the country. Will it be too soon to speculate that perhaps Facebook might also partner with Samsung to create the next generation ‘Facebook Phone?’ Its current endeavor with HTC has flopped, maybe its looking to rope in Samsung? We can’t say for sure, its pure speculation.

Google has announced that starting today, local search results will display an interactive carousel at the top of the page. Users will be shown this carousel when they search for local places, such as restaurants, bars etc. It will list places nearby, clicking on any of the suggestions will bring up more details on it. These details will include overall review score, photos and address. More suggestions can be viewed by clicking the arrow at the right of the carousel. A map appears below it from which users can restrict their search to a specific area.

This interactive carousel has been showing up for some iPad and Nexus users since December. Now it has officially been expanded for desktop users. There’s a little caveat though, for now it is only available to users in the U.S. and it only supports English. Google promises that they will be adding more features and languages over time. Recently Bing too announced a similar feature. It displays a carousel in Bing News, the purpose of which is to make it easier for users to explore people, places and things that they are interested in.

Making sure that Airbus A350 XWB was not the only aircraft grabbing all of the attention at Paris Air Show, Boeing has announced a stretched version of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft. Called 787-10, this aircraft has a 20 foot stretch over the 787-9 and can seat between 300 to 330 passengers. It will be able to fly up to 7,000 nautical miles. Final assembly is reportedly going to be completed soon, test flights will begin in 2017 and the first delivery has been scheduled for 2018.

Ray Conner, Commercial Airplanes President at Boeing, said that this aircraft is “25% more efficient than airplanes of its size today and more than 10% better than anything being offered by the competition for the future.” Quite a lot of customers have already made commitments for the Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner. Air Lease Corporation has ordered 30, GE Capital Aviation Services ordered 10, Singapore Airlines placed an order for 30 and United Airlines has ordered 20 of the 787-10 Dreamliners. The 787-9 was announced earlier this year, its slightly larger than the 787-8. It is expected to make its first flight later this year. All three of these aircraft will share a common type rating, meaning that airlines will have additional flexibility in scheduling and training flight crews.

Earlier this month we notified you when AT&T started taking pre-orders for BlackBerry Q10. At that time the carrier didn’t say exactly when it would release the device. The AT&T BlackBerry Q10 release date has now been made official, it drops on June 21st. The device will cost the same that it does on other U.S. carriers, that’s $199 with a two year contract. Apart from running on the Canadian manufacturer’s new BlackBerry 10 platform, the Q10 is also able to connect to AT&T’s 4G LTE network for high speed data.

BlackBerry Q10 is one of the two current flagship smartphones that the company has launched, the other one being Z10, which was released back in January. The device has a 3.1 inch touchscreen as well as BlackBerry’s iconic full QWERTY keyboard. Physical keyboard aficionados will definitely not want to miss out on this device. This smartphone has reportedly gained much popularity in various markets, some even claim that it is outselling the likes of HTC One, Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 in France. If you’re still in doubt whether or not you want to pick up this device, our detailed BlackBerry Q10 review will help make the choice a lot easier.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 does support wireless charging, but the feature is not built in to the device itself, much like it is on the Nokia Lumia 920. Users actually have to purchase a couple of accessories which enable them to wirelessly charge their latest Android flagship from Samsung. The company listed wireless charging back and pad earlier this month on its website, the accessories weren’t in stock then, but they are now. Those who waited for these accessories to become available can now rejoice.

Read full post →Galaxy S4 Wireless Charging Pad And Cover Now In Stock