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iPad, Surface, Kindle owners reveal their top gripes

Got a beef about your iPad, Surface, or Kindle tablet? Join the club. The new holiday report from Q&A site FixYa sifted through thousands of problems reported by its Web site users to determine the most common grievances. The tablets that faced the firing squad included Apple’s iPad Air and Retina Display iPad Mini, Microsoft’s …

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HTC One Mini Android 4.3 and Sense 5.5 update out now

The HTC One Mini will definitely be receiving an update to Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, HTC has confirmed. The Taiwanese phone-maker told CNET UK that the update will be hitting the UK in over-the-air form ‘live from now’, also bringing version 5.5 of HTC’s Sense interface to the diminutive blower. Although HTC says the update is out now, it’s not …

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Google gives thumbs

Come Christmas Eve, CyanogenMod will be the first third-party version of Android to ship on a phone out of the box. Noted CyanogenMod and Android developer Koushik Datta revealed that Google has approved of a CyanogenMod version of the Oppo N1 to ship on December 24. No other details were revealed in the post, although the currently available version of …

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BlackBerry CEO details survival strategy

BlackBerry is not going down without a fight. There’s no question that the smartphone maker is in trouble. The company has been losing customers and money for some time now. And this third fiscal quarter was no different than previous quarters in that regard. In fact, the losses were a bit steeper than Wall Street had expected. Related stories Best …

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Behind the scenes with Dolby’s new HDR TV tech

While the majority of the TV industry prattles on about higher and higher resolutions, few talk about improving other, more important aspects of the TVs picture: contrast ratio and color. Dolby, though best known for its audio technologies, has been doing a lot with video recently too. The latest development addresses dynamic range, or difference between light and dark, for televisions. …

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Hack your Android like a pro: Rooting and ROMs explained

Mari Benitez/CNET For all of Android’s flexibility and customization, carriers and phone makers still manage to lock down plenty of restrictions, skins, and preloaded software that you just don’t want. Related stories Get Google Now on your (rooted) Android 4.0 phone How to root your Android How to restore your rooted Android to factory settings There isn’t anything wrong with …

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Samsung Tizen screenshots leak ahead of February debut

Samsung’s Android-bashing Tizen is to make its public debut in February — and thanks to leaked screenshots, you can feast your minces on a sneak preview of the long-awaited operating system. Tizen will take a bow on 23 February at a press conference in Barcelona ahead of Mobile World Congress, the annual industry event where phone companies lay out their …

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Calif. lawmaker to introduce smartphone ‘kill switch’ bill

A California senator plans to introduce a new bill that would require smartphones to enable a “kill switch,” a security feature that would make a phone inoperable if it’s stolen. Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) announced Thursday that he will introduce the bill at the start of the 2014 legislative session in January, with the support of San Francisco District …

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