As we all settle into the comfortable seats of our resting places and enjoy a sip of coffee for the weekend, what better company than catching up on what were the biggest stories in the world of personal tech in the week gone by. Just like our previous series, ‘Tech Recap of the Day’ we promise to keep the stories as concise as possible giving you a peek. So without delaying it any further here are the stories that caught our attention over the span of this week:
1) Samsung Galaxy S5 Available in India for Rs 51,500
Samsung has finally bought the Galaxy S5 to India for Rs 51,500. Samsung did not specify the exact price of the device when it launched the device, but gave us a price range, promising to reveal the final exact price later on. Only the white variant of the device is available in India as of now while gold and black versions are scarce. The Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit too have gone on sale alongside the S5 on April 11th as promised by Samsung.
2) Leaked Roadmap of Apple points to two iWatches and iPhones releases in 2014
Popular blog Macrumors published a report during this week with the supposed roadmap of product releases by Apple in the year 2014. The roadmap shows that Apple would finally be bringing the much hyped iWatch in the Q3 of 2014, but there would be not one but two iWatches with 1.3 and 1.5 inch radii and flexible AMOLED display. According to the report, there would be two iPhones with the 4.7 inch device expected in Q3 and 5.5 inch phablet device expected in last quarter. Follow the entire report in our coverage of the story here.
3) Flipkart’s Official App finally lands on Windows Phone
Windows Phone at times must feel like the ignored son of the father called Mr Developer as it always seems to be the last one to receive official apps out of itself, iOS and Android. This week, finally Flipkart, the popular e-com portal of India, released its official app on Windows Phone platform. The app is very much in sync with the large font UI of WP 8 and perhaps looks even better than the Official iOS and Android apps. The app has all the features that the site has, example product selection by range and cart overview. Make sure to read our report to find the download link of the app here.
4) Heartbleed bug Finally Patched
The critical SSL bug called Heartbleed was finally patched this week. As a result of this compromise in SSL, several sites that use the security encryption such as Yahoo, Flickr, Facebook, Gmail etc were affected by this loophole. As a result of this patch, pretty much all the users were required to enter in new passwords for their accounts. We wrote a very comprehensive guide explaining Heartbleed and what you still need to do about it here.
5) Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 808 and 810 SoC
Qualcomm has entered the high end 64 bit race by announcing the Snapdragon 808 and 810 SoC early this week. The chips will not be deployed in a device till next year early though. Despite Android not supporting 64 bit architecture for now, that certainly is the future, hence this move clearly makes sense, though by the time these chips are out, the Apple A7 would almost be 2 year old, once again Apple being the trend setter. If you are wondering the difference between the 801 and 808 then head over to our report on the launch of the two chips here.
6) We reviewed the Note Pro and Galaxy Note III Neo this week
We have been playing about and using the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 as well as the Note III for a while now. Finally we sat down to pen down our thoughts on the final review of the two devices. The Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 is certainly a tablet for those who are in the business world, while the Note III Neo is for those budget conscience people who want the features of the Note III in a slightly lower end hardware. You can check out the review of the Note Pro here and the review of the Galaxy Note III Neo here.
7) Dropbox announced Mailbox for OSX and Android as well as Carousel
Popular cloud service Dropbox has announced Mailbox for OSX and Android this week. Mailbox has been perhaps the best mail client on iOS and finally it has made way to Android and OSX and available for free download. Not just this, Dropbox also announced Carousel, a gallery app to showcase and backup your images to Dropbox as well as help you share images. Check out more about the app here.
8) Twitter Rolled out a redesigned web app
Not too many people use Twitter on web given the smartphone revolution, but Twitter rolled out a redesigned profile page to everybody this week. The change makes the ‘Me’ page look very similar to a Facebook feed with images at the heart of it all. There is also a real time notification popup now on Twitter. If you have not received the update be patient, as it is being rolled out in batches and you will soon receive it.
With that we come to an end of the roundup of the big stories in the world of consumer tech, we hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead. Stay tuned for latest in the tech space, right here.