Brits are locked inside their houses, shunning the sunny outdoors in favour of on-demand movies, new stats from Sky show. During the first three months of 2013, the average number of weekly downloads from Sky’s catalogue of on-demand TV was a whopping 460 per cent higher than it was in the same period last year, …

Barnes & Noble has dropped the price of its Nook ebook tablets, also granting its literary gadgets access to Google’s Play store and all the apps therein… including the Kindle app. Accompanying a significant £29 price slash for the Nook ereader, the 7-inch Nook HD — which we reviewed in November — now costs £129, while the larger Nook HD+ …

Apple’s iron grip on the world of tablets is starting to ease, with Android-powered rivals starting to catch up to the hugely popular iPad. New stats from research firm IDC proclaim that at the end of the first three months of 2013, Apple held 39.6 per cent of the global tablet market, down from 58.1 per cent in the same period …

Now playing: Watch this: Key Lime Pie most-wanted features 3:55 Right now, deep beneath the Earth’s crust, Google engineers are working in secret to develop the next major version of Android. Rumored to be called Key Lime Pie (though some reports suggest the next version may stick with the Jelly Bean moniker), little is known about what new software treats …

HTC could be beavering away on a smaller sequel to the HTC One, fresh rumours concerning the Taiwanese phone-maker’s plans suggest. News of the miniature HTC One, which is apparently codenamed ‘M4’, surfaced in a report on PhoneArena, and is tipped to feature a smaller 4.3-inch, 720p display. The design is rumoured be very similar (the speaker grille, camera flash …

Virgin Mobile has spawned a series of new tariffs, including a monthly contract that gets you unlimited calls to pricey 08 numbers. The ‘VIP’ tariff is, as the name suggests, the most expensive contract that the red-hued operator has on offer. It nets you unlimited calls, data and texts, as well as unlimited calls to numbers that start 0800, 0845, …

Waiting a few months before buying the Galaxy S4 could save you a packet, number-crunchers reckon. The Galaxy S4 could be sporting a discount of up to 15 per cent within the next three months, and have its SIM-free price slashed by a quarter within half a year, stats from price-comparison bods Idealo suggest. The figures come from monitoring the average …

O2 has signed a deal with BT to help provide the nuts and bolts for its upcoming 4G network. The oxygenated operator has inked a 10-year deal with BT, which will see the monolithic phone company providing O2 with extra behind-the-scenes hardware to keep its network up to speed. BT says it will “build a high-capacity transmission network” for O2. …

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 stock woes continue, as UK networks are failing to find enough stock to meet pre-order demand. Supplies of the 5-inch super-phone are so low that British operators have been unable to send everyone who ordered the S4 a phone, even if they threw down their cash weeks ago. “We have dispatched phones to customers who pre-ordered, although …

Samsung could be behind the next Google-branded tablet, if fresh Nexus rumours are to be believed. The South Korean tech giant is beavering away on a slew of new tablets, SamMobile reports, citing a purported product roadmap for 2013. One of those is tipped to be an 11-inch Nexus tablet, that could sport the same octa-core processor that powers some versions …