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New StarVR from Acer and Starbreeze

The new StarVR headset

A new VR headset called StarVR will be the “shared-custody brainchild” of Acer and Starbreeze’s partnership.

In a joint release sent out this Sunday, the game maker Starbreeze and the PC maker Acer, will form a partnership to manufacture, launch and sell a new virtual reality headset called StarVR.

This new move could bring positive change for the PC maker’s overall ailing business, or it could create a disaster. The numbers will show; it must be known, however that since 2011 Acer is on a continuous PC market sliding slope.

Starbreeze, the relatively small Sweedish Company, announced the StarVR headset a year ago, but giving its fierce giant Facebook, Sony and HTC rivals and its personal $10 million 2015 sales, they needed a partner.

Starbreeze needed leverage to reach the level of manufacture and distribution of Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and Vive; they needed help to be able to compete fully with these powerfully marketed headsets.

Nevertheless, the product is believed to be one of the best VR headsets to enter the market. Its standout feature is a 210-degree field of vision, a view that mimics much better what someone sees in real life than the 110-degree vision field of Oculus and Vive.

Although Acer is in freefall with the sales growth, the company’s annual sales reach $1.2 billion. This means that Acer has the money and engineering capacity to scale Starbreeze’s StarVR. More important than that, Acer has the immense computing power needed to deliver the deeply engaging 3D video experience of the virtual reality.

Acer’s bet on Starbreeze might, in fact, be a smart one because PC makers are almost absent from the virtual reality business and everybody – see Amazon or Alibaba – are investing in VR connecting platforms and software.

Acer will likely capture a good portion of the VR market profit.

The advisory firm Digi-Capital says that by 2020, up to “40% of all VR sales will come from hardware.”

To have a virtual reality experience you must have the hardware, yes, but the profit doesn’t stem just from the hardware, it comes from the virtual experience as well.

Therefore, Acer’s partnership with Starbreeze is no chance. With StarVR, Acer will be at both ends of the VR rope: both software with Starbreeze, and its personal computing power and hardware.

Image Source: Everythingvr

Coming Soon: Android Lollipop for Nexus 8

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You no longer have to be a second generation Moto G user to enjoy the enhancements brought by the Android Lollipop. Pushing its own standards higher , Google announced that the Android Lollipop for Nexus 8 and other Nexus devices would become available in the next couple of weeks.

If you remember, there was a huge hype in the press and among tech specialists regarding Lollipop being sported by the second – gen Moto G. This week Google unveiled three new Android – powered Nexus devices, so it makes perfect sense to also announce the much awaited Android Lollipop. So far, after almost a year of testing and moving forward from one phase to the next, the only Nexus devices featuring the Lollipop are Nexus 5 and Nexus 7, the initial testing products.

The company, however, recently declared that the Android Lollipop for Nexus 8 would roll out soon enough. But this is not all! Other Nexus gadgets will also get blessed with the new and exciting operating system. Among them, there are the Nexus 4, 5, 6 and 7 smartphones, among which, the Nexus 6 handset is the newest addition to the family. The Lollipop will also be available for the Nexus tablets, the Nexus 10 version and the new face in town, the Nexus 9.

The news that Google will unleash not only a new and enhanced OS but also a wide ranges of Lollipop powered new devices left the tech world in excitement. Besides Motorola, which somehow managed to be the first to get a piece of the action, other Android smartphones manufacturers are enlisted for the future Android Lollipop release.

We are talking about Samsung and HTC among others. Rumors travel fast and they say a large part of Samsung Galaxy smartphones are very likely to receive the Lollipop: Galaxy S4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Note 4. However, as we reported before, the Galaxy S5 and the Note 4 seem to be scheduled for a full OS update by the end of the year.

If you don’t happen to own a Nexus smartphone or tablet, or a Samsung handset at least, there are still many options, provided you have patience: some of the Motorola, HTC and LG handsets are expected to receive the update as of next week or so.

The Android Lollipop for Nexus 8 is not the final stage of the Google strategy. Experts say this is just the beginning, or at least a precursor to a greater goal and many more tech developments to come. Some went so far in assuming the world will get an Android Lollipop 5.0.1 by the end of the year, as Google implements the OS into Nexus 8 and all the Nexus family devices. So let’s wait for the news and get ready to embrace whatever is coming out of Silicon Valley’s gates!

HTC Re Camera Revealed and It’s Quirky

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There are a lot of cameras that work with smartphones nowadays. Just a couple of months ago we took a look at the Flir One infrared camera for iPhone 5/5s; today we will take a look at the new HTC Re camera, which goes with pretty much any Android or iOS smartphone.

During their Double Exposure media event yesterday in New York, HTC revealed two impressive new products: the HTC Desire Eye camera (a new smartphone with the most powerful front-facing camera) and the HTC Re camera. Today we’re going to take a look at the latter and see if it’s worth buying.

HTC Re Camera

The purpose of the HTC Re camera is to allow your smartphone to catch its breath. It takes pictures, records video and it pairs up with iOS and Android smartphones. It’s not meant to be an action camera, like the GoPro; its target audience are the normal people who use their smartphones to take pictures and record videos of normal everyday things (cats, food and funny stuff, naturally!).

The idea is that you shouldn’t get your smartphone out of your pocket every time you want to take a picture of your plate. Instead, you should use the HTC Re camera. Its interesting design really does make you want to take it out and show it around!

The camera costs $199 and features a front and back button and two LED lights. You’ve got no display or viewfinder, which can prove a bit of a nuisance, and no user interface. It’s a good camera, though: it has a 16 MP sensor and an ultra-wide 146-degree angle that can shoot HD videos (1080p) at 30 fps or slow motion videos (720p) at 120 fps.

After having tested the HTC Re camera we’re not really convinced. The thing that bothered us most was the fact that it took too long to wake up, take a picture and save it. Something that a good smartphone has no trouble with.

Are you interested in the new HTC Re camera? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below.

HTC Desire Eye: the Smartphone that Was Built for Selfies

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Only a month ago HTC revealed their Desire 820 smartphone, an impressive phone with a great price; now HTC has gone and done it again with the new HTC Desire Eye, the smartphone that was built for taking selfies.

HTC had its media event called Double Exposure yesterday in New York. During the event it unveiled two products: the HTC Re camera, a camera that acts as a smartphone accessory and the HTC Desire Eye, a smartphone with a powerful front-facing camera. Let’s take a look at the HTC Desire Eye and see what the fuss is all about.

HTC Desire Eye

HTC Desire Eye was built for taking selfies. It features a great, big camera on the front of the phone and one on the back. It’s the first smartphone to feature the same camera on the front as on the back. It is a 12 MP camera with autofocus capable of recording 1080p videos; it has a dual LED flash performed wonders during the day. In low light conditions, not so much.

The tech specs of the HTC Desire Eye are pretty impressive. The smartphone features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor and has the same RAM their flagship phone has, 2 GB. The 5.2-inch, 1080p display looks very good and has good viewing angles. You can even dunk the HTC Desire Eye in water for 30 minutes and it would be alright, as it is water resistant. It comes in two color options: light blue with dark blue and red with white.

To be honest, the HTC Desire Eye looks great and is a great phone with an even greater price. We recommend it if you don’t want to spend a small fortune on a smartphone, but still get impressive tech specs. Are you impressed with the new HTC Desire Eye? Drop us a line and tell us about it.

HTC Revealed HTC Desire 820, Mid-Range Smartphone

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HTC has just revealed its new mid-range smartphone, the HTC Desire 820. In today’s article, we’re going to take a quick look at it and tell you if it’s worth buying. Following the poor sales of HTC One M8 we hope the HTC Desire 820 performs better, for HTC’s sake and the consumers’.

HTC Desire 820 Tech Specs

The mid-range HTC Desire 820 is an impressive device which looks great; we took a look at the tech specs and we must say that we’re also pretty impressed with them. While there’s no official pricing for the phone, we’re guessing that it will fall into the budget phone category and for a budget phone, the HTC Desire 820 sure has a lot to offer.

The HTC Desire 820 has a Snapdragon 615 processor which is an octa-core processor: four of the cores have 1.0 GHz and for the light tasks and the rest of the four cores are clocked at 1.5 GHz offer a bit more of a bite to the smartphone. It has 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. A microSD card can be inserted into the HTC Desire 820 to expand its memory up to 128 GB.

It has a 5.5-inch display of a 1280×720 resolution, an 8MP front facing camera that’s capable of recording in 1080p. The back camera is a 13MP BSI camera with a pretty impressive 28mm lens. The battery is quite powerful and HTC is saying that it will offer you 22 hours of talk time over 3G.

The HTC Desire 820 is running Android 4.4.4 operating system and it comes in five colors: white, pink, black, red and light blue. We think this smartphone is a truly great smartphone worth buying!

What are your thoughts on the HTC Desire 820? Will you purchase one? Are you interested in it? Share your comments with us in the section below.

It’s Finally Here! HTC One M8 Enters the Competition Against Samsung and Apple

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Rejoice, HTC fans! HTC finally unveiled its new smartphone flagship, the HTC One M8, the much expected successor of the HTC One, the pride and joy of the smartphone HTC family. Given the fact that we all had access to the HTC One M8 leaked specs a few months ago, now all we can do is to enjoy its amazing features. While the HTC One received international acclaim from a technical point of view because its generous resolution display and impressive design, the same smartphone witnessed sales being suffocated by the other two titans in the playing ground, Samsung and Apple, and their successful Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5S respectively.

Therefore, in an attempt to mark their territory in the field of relevant smartphones (and hopefully in the market), HTC came up with the HTC One M8, a true beauty when it comes to design and tech specifications. The new contender will have a lot to endure this year, as you probably know by now, it is going to have to put up with Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 and Apple’s iPhone 6. But it seems it will win…

So what does the HTC One M8 bring new to the market?

Well, first and foremost, the new HTC smartphone comes with a full metal jacket, so to speak, something that aims to dwarf the competition’s plastic cases, a 5.0 inches screen with a very pleasant resolution of 1,920×1,080, a “dual camera”, a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor and extra – storage options up to 128GB, a leverage Samsung used brilliantly back in the day during the competition between the Galaxy S4 and the original HTC One. Moreover, HTC One M8 prides itself with a new and improved BoomSound system, an extra BlinkFeed app that will surely interest Android users and a prolonged battery life. And if you are still in doubt (as the original HTC One received complaints regarding its software capabilities), the HTC One M8 comes with an updated software and a higher degree of user friendliness.

Specialists who already tested and reviewed the HTC One M8 have a lot of expectations from this new smartphone, as it is elegant, powerful, has some state of the art features and is going to be available in the immediate future at AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

A New One from HTC

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Even if starting this year, HTC will focus mostly on less demanding smartphones, in a few short weeks the manufacturer will unveil a new flagship model, codenamed M8. It will most likely be sold under the same name as the current One flagship, HTC trying to focus on a single brand. Excited about the new One from HTC?

The new One from HTC (or One 2 One Two) will try to innovate, as did its predecessor, in terms of photo quality. More specifically, this smartphone will provide the user two main cameras on the back, with 5 ultrapixels sensors each (technology first introduced on One), with a size of 1/3″ and f/2.0 aperture.

The new One from HTC will allow three-dimensional pictures, will be able to change focus after taking the photo and there will be the option of bokeh (focus on foreground, blurred background altogether). Camers will have dual LED flash and will be able to shoot FullHD and photograph at the same time, will be stabilized and accompanied by a front camera of 2.1 MP. Nice!

And as a long -awaited change to the high end HTC smartphones, One 2014 will have microSDXC slot that supports up to 128 GB. Finally! Unfortunately, HTC is too prone to trends and their new top of the range is larger and heavier, and uses nanos. The excellent display of 4.7 ” was replaced with a 5″ Super IPS LCD3 with 1920 x 1080 pixels, protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

New One from HTC: bigger and better

And these changes have made the dimensions go up to 146 x 71 x 9.4 mm and 160 grams. At least we have the same unibody aluminum casing. And inside things have not changed. We have a Qualcomm Snapdragon platform MSM8974AB 801 (unfortunately the 805 was not desired), quad core Krait processor 400 2.3 GHz, 2 GB of RAM and Adreno 330 GPU. Plus 16 GB internal memory. Maybe it would have needed 3 GB of RAM to give it an extra edge in front of the Samsung Galaxy S5.

Otherwise we do not have anything else to add. The battery is a Li-Po 2600 mAh, the sound will be enhanced by Beats Audio technology and will have two stereo speakers, GPS, NFC and even an IrDA port. The operating system Android 4.4.2 with Sense 6.0 interface will be preinstalled, but there will be a Google edition without it. We are looking forward to the official release and hopefully the price will be below the rumored $750.

HTC M8 case suggests fingerprint sensor for flagship successor

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The HTC M8 leaks have been silent for a few weeks, but this new leak points to a reoccurring feature from the HTC One Max, the fingerprint sensor, coming to the successor to the HTC One.

A new plastic mould shows the HTC M8 design and on the back of the smartphone, consisting of a rear camera, mic and fingerprint sensor. This means HTC will not change the design of the fingerprint sensor, despite reviews of the HTC One Max saying it was not a useful feature because of the placement.

Fingerprint sensors are the new thing to have on a smartphone, ever since Apple announced TouchID, other Android partners have been clamouring to make their own sensor, with Samsung trying out Iris eye scanning technology and ZTE adding fingerprint sensors.

HTC M8 looks to run the same sort of feature, we cannot see this being a big improvement on the HTC One Max fingerprint sensor. We hope HTC looks to make the fingerprint sensor a bit more useful, possibly adding new software and services to use the fingerprint sensor.

Nothing has been talked about on the launch, we should see the HTC M8 come around Q1/Q2 in 2014, possibly at Mobile World Congress. Last year, HTC surprised us all with the new design and Sense UI that did not change a lot of the stock Android features.

This year, we hope HTC has the same sort of flair and makes a smartphone engaging on the design front and on the functionality. The only thing we really want to see is a better camera, since the 4 Ultrapixel shooter was only good for low-light images.

HTC One X+ and One X will not get Android Jelly Bean 4.3 update

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HTC has been updating their One range to Android KitKat 4.4, but it looks like the previous generation of devices will not be getting any more updates and the HTC One X and One X+ will stay on Android Jelly Bean 4.1 or Android 4.2, depending on the region.

The HTC One X and One X+ were part of the line that started HTCs downfall, before those devices the Taiwanese mobile maker was on top form, but the devices failed to land any significant market share, compared to the iPhone and Samsung’s Android choices.

Since then we have had the HTC One and HTC One Max and the new plan is to make one smartphone for each category, instead of making three similar sized smartphones for three different price points.

The HTC One X+ was a push on the original HTC One X, it had some new features but the same design. We are surprised HTC is not even updating this to the last version of Jelly Bean, considering it would not take a lot of resources to develop the UI and send the update.

HTC announced the news and said while they do apologise to any users effected, they should know both devices have been optimised to have incredible camera and audio features. The audio features are true but we feel like HTC has never been great when it comes to cameras, even with the Ultrapixel.

One of the good things about HTC is their developer openness, for anyone who can download CyanogenMod, the HTC One X and HTC One X+ can be updated straight to Android KitKat 4.4 and it doesn’t need to have Sense UI.

HTC One, Max and Mini all grabbing Android 4.4.2 before March

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The consistency of updates from HTC is becoming impressive, from one update for most devices and two updates for very popular ones, HTC has now moved to making all devices worth upgrading and has started making sure all devices get updated much faster than they did previously.

All three of the major devices HTC has out right now, including the One, One Max and One Mini, will be grabbing the latest version of Android KitKat 4.4. Since the update will happen over the air, the company says the update will arrive between now and the end of February.

A spokesperson for HTC did say the One and One Max would be updated to KitKat and we believe the Evo 4G will be updated sometime soon. This may be the last update for the HTC One, as the next generation flagship is set to be announced at either CES or MWC.

The Android KitKat update brings a whole host of optimisation to the operating system, but to a user level the major changes are more Google Now functionality, immersion mode for apps, Hangouts integration with SMS and caller prioritisation.

Sadly the new update does not come with a new version of Sense, although HTC has updated the skin for Android KitKat 4.4. We believe the first look at Sense 6.0 will be at CES or MWC, when the company reveals the successor to the HTC One, possibly the HTC Two.

HTC is not the only company working hard to get updates out faster, Motorola has started bringing updates to the Moto X faster than some Nexus devices and both Samsung and Sony have been making sure their highest selling smartphones get quicker updates.

All of this brings more consumer confidence when it comes to picking up an Android device – if you know it will still be viable in two years, it is easy to pen in a two year contract.