Intel CEO favors SoftBank over Dish for Sprint takeover

Intel CEO Paul Otellini is throwing his weight behind SoftBank in the bidding war for Sprint, according to Reuters. Otellini sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski giving word that he favored SoftBank, a wireless carrier based in Japan, over Dish for the Sprint takeover offer. Sprint has been in talks with …

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Sony Xperia SP glams up Android, shimmies to UK for £250

Sony’s new Android phone, the Xperia SP, has a disco-flavoured coloured light strip and it’s partying it up right now on Orange and T-Mobile for £250 pay as you go. The SP’s more fun than your usual dowdy mid-range blower, with a see-through strip underneath the screen that glows different colours. It’s part notification light, part glitter ball — it’ll …

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BlackBerry CEO says tablets will be useless in five years

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins is not a fan of tablets. Heins questioned the need for the mobile devices in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday. “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” he said to Bloomberg. Related stories Best Password Manager to Use for 2022 Your Phone Screen Is Gross. Here’s How …

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Nokia to invest in fancy camera tech to boost Lumia PureView

Nokia has its eyes on brand-new camera tech in a bid to win back customers from the smart phone competition. The Finnish phone fabricator is planning to invest in Pelican Imaging, a California based startup that specialises in developing new camera technology, Bloomberg reports. Pelican’s cameras not only take high-quality photos, they also allow you to adjust and refocus your …

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Galaxy S4 price to drop 25 per cent in 6 months, stats say

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 …

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SoftBank CEO bashes Dish’s Sprint offer, says his is superior

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son didn’t mince words when discussing Dish Network’s unsolicited offer to buy Sprint Nextel from under the Japanese carrier. “To me, it’s ridiculous,” he said Tuesday of Dish’s vision of merging its satellite TV service with Sprint’s wireless service. Son spent more than 90 minutes during an investor presentation in Japan — primarily conducted in English — …

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AT&T trade

Related stories Samsung Galaxy S4 review All about the HTC One (review) Your smartphone’s secret afterlife How’s this for an instant discount? Beginning Wednesday, when you trade in (almost) any old smartphone, AT&T is knocking $100 off the price of any new smartphone — including the HTC One, iPhone 5, BlackBerry Z10, and Samsung Galaxy S4. Of course there are …

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Tech CEOs say the darndest things

There they go again. Seems being the CEO at a technology company invariably involves hitting the stump and doing what George H.W. Bush (father, not the son) once famously called “the vision thing.” So it was that earlier today Blackberry CEO Thorstein Heins made headlines when he predicted that the clock is ticking on tablet computers. “In five years I …

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Verizon set to roll out Cloud storage ‘in the coming weeks’

Verizon Wireless is getting into the cloud business in a big way. In the coming weeks, Verizon said Tuesday, it will deliver cloud-based storage for smartphones and tablets. The company’s customers will receive 500MB of storage at no charge, but can get up to 125GB of storage. Verizon is offering four storage plans to customers: 500MB: Free 25GB: $2.99 per …

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Intel, Samsung invest in high

Expect Labs, a company building a Siri-like platform on steroids, has just raised some extra cash from both Samsung and Intel. Venture capital arms at both companies on Tuesday announced that they have dropped some money into Expect Labs to help it continue to build its Anticipatory Computing Engine, a service for companies that’s “designed to analyze and understand conversations …

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BlackBerry boss predicts tablets will be dead ‘in five years’

Thorsten Heins isn’t a big fan of big screens. The BlackBerry boss reckons mobile phones will become so good you won’t need a tablet. “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet any more,” he told Bloomberg. “Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not …

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Orange is the New Black headed to Netflix worldwide this July

Fresh comedy series Orange is the New Black is Netflix-bound. Thirteen hour-long episodes of the original comedy-drama series are set to hit the online streaming service worldwide on 11 July. Based on the memoirs of Piper Kerman, Orange is the New Black stars Taylor Schilling, from 2012’s The Lucky One, as Piper Chapman, sentenced to a woman’s prison for a …

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LG: curved OLED and smaller Ultra HD TV coming to Australia

Launching its 2013 TV range in Australia, LG has shown off smaller-sized Ultra HD TVs, a curved OLED TV and Ewan McGregor. LG’s 55-inch curved OLED TV on display at the launch in Sydney today. (Credit: Nic Healey/CNET Australia) Smaller, more affordable versions of its 84-inch Ultra HD TV are a key strategy of LG’s home entertainment offering for Australia, …

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Sony ‘mastered in 4K’ Blu

The “mastered in 4K” name is sure to confuse many buyers this year, but Sony’s special new Blu-rays are an impressive boost in quality over your average Blu-ray release. You’d be excused for thinking this Blu-ray is in 4K. It isn’t, but it is still very good. (Credit: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) Sony is pushing its status as the only …

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Hands

We’ve all seen them: smartphones with shattered screens, the unfortunate victims of sudden outbursts of gravity. Your heart sinks a bit, watching your friends, loved ones, even total strangers slide their fingers over that sad, spidered glass, thinking, “There but for the grace of…” Knowing full well the costs and hassles of replacing a busted screen, I pressed a BodyGuardz …

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