Xiaomi Mi Note Phablet is an iPhone Killer

Xiaomi, the Chinese company that recently became the world’s most valuable startup (depending on your definition of startup), took the wraps off its latest phone in Beijing today… and the comparisons to Apple are likely to flow once again.

The Xiaomi Mi Note is priced at 3299 CNY (~$530) for a 64 bit model, and the higher-speed Mi Note Pro, both look to be the Chinese company’s response to Apple’s iPhone 6+. Indeed, that’s a comparison that Xiaomi positively encouraged at its launch event, where CEO and co-founder Lei Jun made multiple references and comparisons of the two phones.

The Mi Note itself sports a 5.7-inch screen, with a Snapdragon 801 2.5 GHz processor powering it, alongside 3GB RAM. The 16GB version retails for 2,299 CNY (around $370), while the 64GB model is 2,799 (circa $450).

The Mi Note is just 6.95mm thick and weighs in at 161g. Jun said the company had focused on improving battery life — it actually produces a line of portable chargers, so has the knowledge in-house — and the Mi Note packs a 3,000 mAh battery courtesy of LG.

Much of the comparison to Apple stems from the fact that the U.S. company is still seen as the producer of the best products on the market, which makes it the standard to beat. Although Lei Jun did crack a few jokes, including one about how easy it is for Apple customers to switch their SIM to a Mi Note thanks to its support for multiple SIM types.

The feature-packed Mi Note is sure to resonate with fans in China, where the iPhone 6+ has reportedly been a big hit, and it will be interesting to see how it fares overseas, too.

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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5 Incredible iPhone App Deals for You This Weekend

Looking to download a few great iPhone apps while saving some money this weekend? Check out these five, all on sale or free right now.

Van Gogh: Painted With Words

 

 

With plenty of apps released by the world’s largest museums, you might think there’s little room for apps focused on a single artist. But this Van Gogh app is a true work of complete adoration for the artist, which makes as much apparent in the final product.

Get it Free from iTunes

Beer Buddy

An app that allows you to scan barcodes on beer bottles in order to learn more about your beverage, Beer Buddy is perhaps much more useful than many would like to admit. It’s a constant struggle to remember the name of a beer you once had at that place after your buddy’s thing that time a year ago.

Get it Free from iTunes

File Hub

A great app for storing or managing files, File Hub allows you to monitor all your cloud services, like Google Drive and Dropbox. The app provides a single uniform platform to access your files across those services.

Get it at $3.99 from iTunes

Routina

Routina is a completely different kind of productivity/reminder app. It’s not a grocery list or a workflow organizer; rather, Routina reminds you of recurring events. Simply tell your app to remind you to pay rent every month, visit the doctor twice a year.

Get it at $0.99 from iTunes

NewsBar

NewsBar is a very customizable RSS reader that allows you to curate news based on source, keyword, or interest, publishing updates to your phone the moment a story goes live. No swipe and load—the app sends you a notification that stories have been loaded to your device.

Get it Free from iTunes

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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Top Trending Enterprise Apps for 2015

The enterprise application playing field of today is quite different from that of only a few years ago. So what are some of the biggest trends as we head into 2015?

Faster, Easier App Development

Adam Seligman, vice president of Developer Relations at Salesforce, commented on how every year there are new technologies that come out and capture everyone's attention. He mentioned Docker, which has the tag line "build, ship and run any app, anywhere," as an example. The latest tools for creating enterprise applications are getting easier and faster to use, he pointed out.

Enterprise Overtakes Consumer Apps

The mobile world has been dominated by consumer apps for a number of years. But Seligman senses we are seeing a reset in enterprise apps.

"The economic wave has crested on consumer apps which are baseline expectations, not huge profit engines," he said. "But apps for employees and B2B partners are a huge opportunity."

Cloud Apps Thrive

"Cloud has become the default development platform for software vendors’ enterprise applications," said Bob Muglia, CEO of Snowflake Computing. "It is also becoming the default choice for most companies’ packaged applications and is even starting to become the default choice for companies’ internal IT application development projects."

SaaS Acquisition Frenzy

Muglia takes this a stage further. He thinks there will be far fewer small software-as-a-service vendors due to an accelerating trend of acquisition of SaaS application vendors by traditional software vendors.

"Enterprise application vendors with both cloud and on-premise offerings will increasingly shift toward selling the cloud version of applications as their default sales motion because of the lower cost of delivering and supporting their cloud versions," Muglia said.

Need for Data Speed

No longer can an application depend on yesterday's data. Propelled by the consumer market’s need for speed, the enterprise app space is moving toward real-time data and real-time answers.

"One retail CIO told me that while it’s great to get a model of their customers reflecting their history, what he really needed to know is what the customers have been doing with their brands in the last 10 minutes," said Monte Zweben, CEO and co-founder of Splice Machine.

Applications that Ease Mobile Workflows

Truly productive and useful enterprise mobile apps are all about continuous business processes and workflows. For example, most users don’t want to just look up a customer and corresponding contact information, they want to look up a customer, check for suitable products, show relevant information about those products, place a purchase order for those products and send the customer a summary of that transaction.

Outsourcing Mobile App Development

It’s one thing to want all your enterprise applications available on mobile devices, fully functional and completely integrated. But it’s quite another to be able to afford the resources to create that – particularly if you have a large existing base of customers using on-premise software.

Enterprise Apps 2014

Those users and their various older versions must be maintained, which can make it difficult to free up enough talent to create the mobile tools required.

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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LG’s Mystery Smartwatch At CES Is Actually Running webOS

The smartwatch market is finally starting to gain some traction. Samsung is shipping smartwatches that run its own Tizen operating system and numerous OEMs (including Samsung) are shipping smartwatches that run Google’s Android Wear operating system.

LG was one of the first to hit the ground running with Android Wear, launching the G Watch in June. The company followed up shortly with the more premium, better-looking G Watch R, which also ran Android Wear.

LG has shown some signs that it’s willing to field an alternative to Android Wear, and this past October announced the availability of the webOS SmartWatch SDK beta. Since then, LG has been pretty tight-lipped about its smartphone aspirations with webOS… until now. 

 

But what’s most interesting from the videos showing the device in action is that this build of webOS for smartwatches looks near production-ready. Animations are fluid, there are functioning apps, and everything in general looks very polished.

“We’re going to slowly try to build an (software) ecosystem around areas we can have more control over,” said an unnamed LG representative at CES in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Want To Know More? Check-Out This Video

 

But just because LG has webOS in its back pocket doesn’t mean that Android Wear will get the boot. When LG does launch webOS smartwatches in early 2016, they will be featured alongside their Android Wear siblings.

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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Sony Launches Walkman with High Resolution Audio at CES 2015

Sony is bringing back the Walkman, with a new model of the music player pioneer that comes with high-resolution playback and Bluetooth-connected headphones.

The new Walkman, targeting audiophiles and set to cost about $US1200 in the United States ($1485), is a high-end version of a model Sony released in 2013 after retiring the classic cassette player in 2010. The first-generation, clunky-looking Walkman went on sale in July 1979, redefining the way people listened to music.

The NW-ZX2 Walkman was among products unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday (Australia time), and will be available globally alongside new high-end headphones in the first quarter of this year. Local pricing is yet to be announced.

Sony also presented an ultra high-definition action camera that uses the 4K video format it's trying to push, a challenge to GoPro in the market for filming extreme sports.

Chief Executive Office Kazuo Hirai led the presentation at CES as Tokyo-based Sony seeks to move past the embarrassing hacking on its Hollywood studio, an attack Hirai described as "vicious and malicious."

All of Sony's web-connected TVs will run this year on Google's Android platform with Sony planning models from 43 inches to 75 inches (1.9 metres). The X900C TV is just 0.2 inches deep at its thinnest point, the company said.

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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Lenovo Unveils A Unique ThinkPad Stack System & 8 ThinkPads At CES 2015

Lenovo has shared its line of ThinkPad laptops at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015, and there's a new ThinkPad stack system meant to enterprise mix and match units for mobile solutions.

ThinkPad Laptops Refreshed

The ThinkPad line has two flagship Ultrabooks in Lenovo's offerings, and both are getting updated for 2015. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is one of the most portable 14-inch laptops, and couples a high-resolution touch screen (optional) with a thin and light rugged case (0.73 inches, 2.9 pounds).

The ThinkPad X250 is Lenovo's 12.5-inch laptop that works with the company's Power Bridge technology for flexibility while traveling. The X250 is only 0.8 inches thick and 2.88 pounds. Power Bridge is a dual battery system that allows the user to configure it on the fly for maximum battery life or lowest weight.

There are four ThinkPads in the 450 series, the T450s, T450, E450, and the L450. The T450s is a 14-inch laptop that is larger than the two flagship models noted above (0.83 inches, 3.5 pounds).

Lenovo addresses those who prefer a large screen with the T550. This is configurable with either a 15.6-inch display or a 15.5-inch high-resolution display (2880 x 1620). It comes with up to 16GB of memory, up to a TB of HDD (or 512GB SSD).

The E ThinkPad line has two laptops, the E550 and the E450. The E550 packs a 15.6-inch display while the E450 is another 14-inch model. Neither laptop is available with a touch screen but both are available with optional optical drives. Both models can be configured with up to 1 TB of HDD or 128GB of SSD.

ThinkPad Stack System

The ThinkPad Stack has four modules, and they can be purchased and used interchangeably. The modules sit on top of each other and share power and data when stacked.

The four ThinkPad Stack modules that will be available in April 2015 are:

• Bluetooth speaker: for audio and conference call handling, 3.5 mm, microUSB ($89.99)
• Power Bank: 10,000 mAH, dual USB, microUSB ($49.99)
• Access Point: Shares 4G phone connection ($199.99 with the HDD below)
• HDD: 1 TB, USB 3.0, password security

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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LG Will Launch New Extra Wide Gaming Monitor at CES 2015

LG Electronics on Wednesday announced that the company will showcase its new 21:9 UltraWide Gaming monitor lineup at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015.

The new monitor lineup from LG highlights "world's first UltraWide monitor compatible with AMD FreeSync technology."

"AMD FreeSync technology is an innovative monitor technology, based on free and open industry standards, to eliminate the tearing and stuttering that has plagued PC gaming for 30 years, [...] We are pleased that LG Electronics stands with us with truly exciting AMD FreeSync-ready displays like the LG UltraWide Gaming Monitor," said Roy Taylor, Corporate Vice President of ISV/ IHV Partner Group, AMD.

At CES 2015, the company will showcase its first curved 34-inch UltraWide (21:9) monitor (Model 34UC97) with Quad-HD resolution (3440x1440 pixels). The company claims that the 178-degree viewing angle for the monitor's IPS display recreates colours across over 99 percent of the sRGB colour space, and there is no colour distortion at any angle.

The other two products to be showcased by the company include a 21:9 curved UltraWide multi-display (Model 34UC87M) targeted at stock traders and other financial professionals who need to keep track of large amounts of data simultaneously, and the Digital Cinema 4K Monitor (Model 31MU97) featuring 4K resolution (4096x2160 pixels).

LG Ultra-Wide Gaming Monitor

"LG's premium 21:9 UltraWide monitors are designed with the unique needs of consumers in mind," said In-kyu Lee, Senior Vice President and Head of the TV and Monitor Division at the LG Electronics Home Entertainment Company.

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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