Android is in a tricky spot within China. While the OS is run by practically every smartphone in China that’s not an iPhone, including of course handsets from domestic champions such as Xiaomi, the Chinese government maintains a near state of war against Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Google, with its libertarian ethos, antagonized the Chinese government when it operated in the country by refusing to comply with censorship requests. When Google left China, the Chinese government began traffic shaping its packets before outright blocking Google late last year. Now trying to use Google or things like Gmail or Google Apps is impossible in China without a VPN (and the majority of which no longer work inside the country). The majority of Android platforms used by Chinese vendors are heavily forked. While this presents its own security problems, it’s the best vendors can do to still use Android without relying on Google.

China’s government recognizes the problem and is developing its own indigenous mobile OS as a way to remove the dependence Chinese companies have on Google.

For Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) part, the company says that it will assist China in developing this platform to ensure compatibility with the Intel platform (a must considering the investments Intel is making in Chinese smartphone vendors).

“We have and continue to collaborate on indigenous platforms. We have thousands of software engineers and leadership here in China,” Intel’s Doug Fisher, the company’s Vice President General Manager, Software and Services Group, said at IDF Shenzhen 2015. “We will work with China’s government industries to ensure that we participate in the creation of an indigenous operating environment here in China.”

He said that Intel’s role with the China OS Association, the industry group working with China’s government, will be to “enable” the OS.

It will be interesting to see how close China lets Intel get to the development process of the indigenous OS. On one hand China would need to consult with Intel to ensure compatibility with its platform. On the other hand, China might not want to let Intel get too close to the platform for fear that it would lose face letting a foreign firm in to help with the heavy lifting development work – or worse plant a backdoor.

The post Intel Onboard to Support Indigenous China Mobile OS appeared first on VR World.

In an interview with the Gaming Business Review, an online site ran by M2 Publishing, Tim Sweeney detailed recent developments in Epic Games, as well as his visions of the future.

The interview obviously took place during Game Developer’s Conference 2015, which is traditionally held in San Francisco, CA. We highly recommend that you head there and read the whole interview, but we could not miss out on a question that is shaping the industry right now:

GBR: How big do you see virtual reality becoming over the next five to ten years as a business?

TS: Virtual reality and Augmented Reality will literally change the world. They will be the next computing platform.  There’s a market for billions of these devices because everybody who has a smartphone today will — perhaps in as much as decade from now — much prefer entertainment in a completely immersive experience that takes advantage of your entire field of view and has full body input through miniaturized cameras and other technologies.  But we’re in the early days of it now.  Let’s be clear, everything is in the development kit stage.  It is for early adopters and what we’re seeing now is really just the Palm Pilot to the platform that will evolve into something iPhone-like in its quality.

There’s no point in denying it, after seeing billions of dollars earned by 3D movies which rely on ‘cheap tricks’ to achieve depth (try finding animated feature movies without 3D being the ‘default’ option), next step will bring us technologies such as Microsoft Hololens, production versions of Facebook-owned Oculus VR (John Carmack keynote) and second-generation Google Glass, which is developed in near-secrecy by the search giant and a practical monopoly in glasses, Italian giant Luxottica.

After operating for almost 20 years as an independent studio, Epic Games made waves across the gaming and development community when they accepted an investment from Tencent Holdings (HKG:0700) last June (2014). The Chinese powerhouse paid up $330 million for 48.4% of the company, setting the valuation just a bit below $680 million.

Tim Sweeney continued to be the CEO, while his lifelong business partner Mark Rein still continues as in his role of Vice President.  Not selling themselves outright like idSoftware did with ZeniMax Media, Epic Games continues to be independent studio, consisting out of product (games) and technology development units. Their recent announcement about making Unreal Engine ‘free’ opens a path for even more ‘premium freemium’ titles which base their revenue model on microtransactions.

The post Tim Sweeney: Virtual Reality will Literally Change the World appeared first on VR World.

Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) announcement of the new $149 Chromebook as well as the Chromebit included details of a partnership with Indian vendor Xolo, Thai communications leader True and Indonesia’s Nexian, with all three brands set to offer devices running Chrome OS in the near future.

Currently, HP (NYSE:HPQ), LG (KRX:066575), Acer (TPE:2353) and Samsung (KRX:005930) offer Chromebooks in India, with the offerings getting a lot of visibility in retail as well as e-commerce stores. However, the segment itself has failed to take off in the country, mostly due to the lack of advertising. The pricing, which starts at the equivalent of $400 for devices such as the HP chromebook 14 also played a part in poor sales, with products such as the Lenovo G50 offering a full-fledged Windows experience for just a $100 more.

But with Google aggressively pushing Chrome OS devices, that is set to change in the coming months. Once limited in functionality, Chromebooks now offer a robust set of services, with the hardware also receiving a hefty upgrade in the form of full-HD multi-touch displays.

Google has announced that it is working on a touch-centric user interface for Chrome OS, and that it will be making it easier for developers to port Android apps to the platform. A total of ten new devices from the likes of HP, LG, Lenovo (HKG:0992) and Dell are set to launch over the coming months as well, which will considerably expand the Chrome OS ecosystem.

The post Vendors Get Ready To Launch Chromebooks In India appeared first on VR World.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) unveiled Tuesday two new low-cost Chromebooks that will make the Google laptop platform much more competitive against the low-end Windows laptop space.

The two Chromebooks are from Hisense (SHA:600060) and Haier (HKG:1169),two China-based OEM/ODMs known best for providing budget electronics to specific retailers. Both Chromebooks are priced at $149 and are powered by the quad-core Rockchip RK3288 SoC clocked at 1.8GHz.

Each laptop is virtually identical with 11.6-inch LED-backlit display, 2GB of DDR3L SDRAM, 16GB of eMMC flash storage, and a 720p webcam. The only difference between the two is battery life.

First up is the Hisense Chromebook, which will be exclusively sold at Walmart (NYSE: WMT). It promises 8.5 hours of battery life. It’s 0.6 inches thick and weighs 3.3 pounds.

The Haier Chromebook 11, an exclusive to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), has 10 hours of promised battery life.

What’s in a Rockchip?

Rockchip is probably best known for its deal with Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) to bring x86 to the next-generation of cheap tablets for the Chinese market.

Aside from that Rockchip is a fairly run-of-the-mill low-end ARM (LON: ARM) manufacturer that would one day like to challenge the incumbents such as Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) and MediaTek (TPE: 2454).

The Rockchip RK3288 has four 1.8 GHz ARM Cortex A17 cores and a quad-core ARM Mali T760 GPU.

Benchmarks on the RK3288 are scant, but one from January from a firm called CNX Software shows that its around 18% faster in Antutu than an Intel Atom Z3735F.

Chromebook on a stick

The other Rockchip RK3288 powered Chrome device is the Chromebit, and HDMI dongle that brings full Chromebox (a set-top Chrome computer) to a dongle. It’s powered by a Rockchip 3288 SoC, has 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and 802.11ac connectivity.

One obvious use case for the Chromebit is presentations. Instead of trying to get one’s laptop connected to the venue’s projector, someone could just plug in the Chromebit into the projector’s HDMI port.

Pricing of the Chromebit will be less than $100.

The post Rockchip’s RK3288 Powers Sub-$150 Chromebooks and Chrome Stick appeared first on VR World.

With over a million apps each on the Apple App Store and on Google Play, marketing one’s app must be tough business for any developer. With the multitude of copycat apps that essentially have similar functionalities, app developers will be lucky to have their offerings included in top and featured lists, whether in terms of downloads, ratings, reviews or revenues. How does one reach the tipping point, in which great traction — and organic revenue potential — will shortly come thereafter?

It seems developers are finding ways to game the system, in what can be considered shady practices or at least grey areas in building up the profile of one’s app. In a recent tweet, Hong Kong-based TapCase developer Simon Pang shares what appears to be a lady doing ratings and reviews on an array of tablets. Pang writes how “this is how App Store ratings work.”

This is how App Store ratings work. Welcome to the reality. pic.twitter.com/0MyHmTeqwE

— simonpang (@simonpang) February 2, 2015

Barry Mead of Fireproof Games tweets that “‘respected’ major developers use systems like these daily.”

This being Twitter, of course, there is no verification yet as to the original source of the image, and whether the photographed activity is, indeed, a pay-to-review or pay-to-rate service. However, it has shed some light into such practices that skew app store ratings, popularity, downloads and eventually revenues for these developers.

Wall Street Journal‘s Lisa Fleisher plans to dig deeper into the issue. But without prejudice to Fleisher’s journalistic work, we can already arrive at several questions and critiques with respect to how major app ecosystems are run.

Is it against policy? What is being done?

One might wonder whether Apple is aware of how developers are gaming its app discovery system. It’s reminiscent of how developers will jack up their app prices from $0.99 to $999 (the maximum that the App Store supports), and then having someone buy a copy of the app. Even as Apple gets a 30% share of the money, the app then gets a boost on the top paid apps list, after which the developer can revert the price back to $0.99. In essence, moneyed developers can shell out cash and then lose 30% of this value, but then get a potentially more popular (and revenue generating) application in return.

If pay-to-review farms are mass-producing ratings and reviews in exchange for pay, then it’s grossly unfair to developers who rely on organic reviews and ratings by actual users. Ratings affect discoverability and revenue potential. Developers can easily recoup their investment once they start getting millions of daily downloads.

Apple’s developer terms of service says this: “If you attempt to cheat the system (for example, by trying to trick the review process, steal data from users, copy another developer’s work, or manipulate the ratings) your Apps will be removed from the store and you will be expelled from the developer program.”

Google Play also has this to say in its developer program policies: “Developers must not attempt to change the placement of any Product in the Store, or manipulate any product ratings or reviews by unauthorized means such as fraudulent installs, paid or fake reviews or ratings, or by offering incentives to rate products.”

But “tricking the review process” and “manipulating the ratings” are quite broad terminology. Does it specifically ban paying someone to do manual reviews? Or does it only ban bots? Does it have a geographic dimension? And what does Apple do to apps that employed such practices, but then gained legitimate and organic ratings, reviews and downloads later on?

At least Google’s terminology explicitly calls out paid and fake reviews and ratings. The question is whether the app store ecosystems are actually doing concrete steps in going after violators.

Gaming and economics

This reminds me of the way people have gamed the big systems before. To wit:

• In the heyday of pay-per-click advertising, clickfraud was a big deal. But it did not prevent publishers from hiring third parties to do manual clicking to jack up revenue — or sometimes even to kill off competitors’ campaigns or screw with their ad budgets.
• Content farms used to be a popular way to earn millions. These companies paid measly cents for writers to churn out rehashed, SEO-friendly, but questionable quality articles, and then earn from the ad placements. This was a viable business model until Google pulled the plug with various search algorithm updates that ended up hurting both content farms and valid publications.
• While trading virtual goods with real money may be against the policies of most games, it has not stopped companies from doing “gold farming” activities — something that has implications not only within the dynamics of MMORPGs, but also development economics, as well (e.g., buyers tend to be from developed countries, while players who play to sell items come from emerging economies).
• Today, viral sites have the habit of ripping off content from other sources (in which the originating source is rarely credited), adding clickbait headlines for the benefit of social sharing, and earning from advertisements. Facebook has recently attempted to curtail these practices through algorithm changes, but viral junk still remains in our newsfeeds.

The common denominator among these examples is money. Where there is potential money involved, then people will tend to find ways to game the system for their economic advantage. Never mind user experience, content quality or business ethics.

Given that “respected major developers” are said to be doing this, can we still trust app store ratings and discovery mechanisms?

Feature image credit: Bloomua / Shutterstock.com

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Google Taiwan (NASDAQ: GOOGL) launched a tutorial and training program – the Digital Mars Initiative – to help college graduates hook up with local companies and eventually get hired.

“Why ‘Digital Mars Initiative?’ The name ‘Mars’ came into the picture because these ‘Martians’ think differently with more innovative and new ideas and we are helping them to get into the digital marketing field,” said Stanley Chen (陳俊廷), Google Taiwan’s country director.

Chen made his remarks during a press conference at Google Taiwan’s headquarters on Feb. 5. During previous conversations with Google’s vendors, Chen said, he has often heard complaints that employers had hard time recruiting the right talents while college graduates had a hard time getting hired, because what they have learned on the campus may not be the advantage for them to be recruited.

“We decided to offer the chance to help, train and recruit these young men and help our friends in different industries find their right employees at the same time,” Chen said.

Chen said that the 60 companies in 13 industries participated in the program and offered up to 170 vacancies in marketing, gaming, e-commerce and mass communications, while the average monthly paycheck for these jobs would fall between US$967 and US$1,451. The “Digital Mars Initiative” is the largest talent recruiting project across the Asia-Pacific region, Chen said, and is aiming to help at least 2,000 Taiwanese college graduates by the end of this year.

Those who register online will receive free courses by Google, including digital marketing and keyword advertising – the Good Adwords.  After they complete the courses, Google will also offer chances for them to be certified.

“Google is optimistic about the potential and competitive advantage of the Taiwanese workforce and will continue to strengthen local young people’s abilities through diverse and long-term talent cultivation projects,” said Google Taiwan Managing Director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰).

The post Google Taiwan Lanches “Digital Mars Initiative” appeared first on VR World.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced Wednesday that its Glass project had shifted out from its Google X research arm and into a standalone project. As a result the Explorer project will end on Monday and sales to the public will hault.

While Google will stop selling Glass to the public as part of the change, sales to businesses and educational institutions will continue as Google seeks to push its Glass at Work program. For users that have Glass headset, the devices will continue to work as normal but there will no longer be any updates for the device.

The Explorer program was never meant to be permanent. Google only intended it to be a temporary endeavour to see how people would use Glass in their personal lives and in the workplace. While Glass received a fair amount of criticism for the privacy implications of its front facing camera, later on in the Glass program it did find a following amongst some as a productivity enhancing device in the workplace.

Going forward, the Glass project will be run by Ivy Ross who will report to Nest’s Tony Fadell. However Google has confirmed that Glass will not be integrated into the Nest project.

An updated version of Glass is expected later this year.

The post Google Glass is No More appeared first on VR World.

After Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), it is now time for MediaTek to announce its plans for the year ahead. The Taiwanese chip vendor witnessed a meteoric rise in 2014 thanks to affordable SoCs that offered LTE connectivity, and for 2015 MediaTek is looking to the IoT segment to drive growth.

One of the major announcements from MediaTek at CES was that it will be powering Sony’s Bravia line of TVs this year. Sony has already announced that all of its smart TVs will run on Android TV, and by securing a partnership with the renowned TV manufacturer, MediaTek has scored a major win in this segment with the MT5595 SoC. The SoC is targeted at 4K TVs that run Android, and is likely to be featured in other UHD TVs that are set to launch later this year.

MediaTek’ big win at #ces2015 might not be a flagship handset, but rather its silicon in Sony’s smart TVs. pic.twitter.com/wuhYVos3Fi

— Sam Reynolds (@thesamreynolds) January 7, 2015

MediaTek has also announced that it is collaborating with Google on an Ultra HD TV platform powered by Android TV, and that its solution is the first in the world to support Google VP9 and HEVC codecs, which are designed for 4K2K content streaming at 60 frames per second.

As for the hardware, the MT5595 SoC contains four cores ARM v7 cores – two high-performance Cortex A15 cores as well as two energy-efficient Cortex A7 cores – in a big.LITTLE arrangement. Voice search is an inherent feature in all models that feature the SoC, and customers will also be able to browse the Play Store for games, movies and music. MT5595 isn’t the fastest SoC in the market, but it is more than sufficient to run the Android 5.0-based interface.

Also included in the MT5595 is MediaTek’s ClearMotion technology, which the vendor claims will upscale low-quality content. The SoC adheres to ATSC/DTMB/DVB/ISDB standards, and works with middleware solutions like Ginga/MHEG/MHP and broadband services like HbbTV.

The SoC is in mass production, with MediaTek announcing that consumers will be able to buy TVs that feature the chipset starting March 2015.

The post CES 2015: MediaTek MT5595 SoC To Be Featured In Sony’s Android TVs In 2015 appeared first on VR World.

A Chinese tech investment group has invited Israeli startups to pitch their companies at Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Tel Aviv Campus on January 15 to a panel of investors and professionals from both countries.

The committee will select 10 startups to present their pitch live online to Zhongguancun Private Equity & Venture Capital Association’s (ZVCA) annual conference. ZVCA has over 1,000 members and $15 billion in assets under its management.

Meanwhile, Chinese state media is reporting the government intends to start negotiations for a free trade deal with Israel this year. China – the world’s second largest economy – has been aggressively pursuing closer diplomatic and economic ties with Israel in recent years. China’s attention has been particularly focused on the vibrant technology industry that has won Israel the nicknames of Startup Nation and Silicon Wadi.

The Israeli government has welcomed China’s interest with open arms. Israel’s Economy Minister Naftali Bennett described the two countries “natural partners for technological and business cooperation” during a visit to China in late November.

In addition, bilateral trade surpassed $8 billion last year. Israel’s blossoming trade with China contrasts with the threat of boycotts from Europe and the United States over the lack of progress in talks with the Palestinians.

However, Israeli companies remain concerned by Chinese threats to intellectual property. Last year, Maryland-based security firm Cyber Engineering Services, Inc. (CES) accused the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398 – state-sponsored hackers going by the alias of Comment Crew – of stealing sensitive information from 2011 to 2012 from three Israeli defense companies responsible for the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

The U.S. Justice Department indicted five prominent military members of the group last May on charges of economic espionage for hacking several American companies. As the United States has the power to veto defense deals involving American technology, Israeli companies are likely to proceed cautiously in seeking Chinese funding.

The post Israeli Startups Warily Seek Opportunities in Chinese Investment appeared first on VR World.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) said on Dec. 30 that it has nothing to do with the alleged censorship in China.

Recently, reports emerged that Google’s popular Gmail service has been blocked in China. For years traffic to Google’s search engine has been severely throttled as the search engine giant refuses to work with the Chinese government. Google’s YouTube has been outright blocked in China since 2009.

“We have checked, and there is nothing wrong on our end,” a Singapore-based spokesman for Google said.

Google’s own Transparency Report, which shows real-time traffic to Google services, displayed a sharp drop-off in traffic to Gmail from China on Dec. 26.

The spokesman’s remarks were referred to the fact that by Google’s “transparency report,” which shows real-time traffic to Google services, displayed a sharp drop-off in traffic to Gmail from China on Dec. 26, while Gmail users discovered that they could not receive or sent any email messages in and out from China.

Hua Chunying (華春瑩), spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said on Dec. 29 that she has not idea what happened to Gmail and suggested the press to go for further explanation or comments from related government departments or Google.

On Dec. 30, an editorial in Global Times, a state-run newspaper in China, said that if the Chinese government actually censored Gmail, users will have to live with it anyway.

The editorial said that “we need to believe that the government will not do something that does not make any sense.” It also urged Google users to “let it go.”

The article said that the Chinese government has been requesting Google to follow related laws in China while Google insisted its own policy and hoped not to be restricted by China’s laws.

“Gmail’s censorship could be China’s work, could be Google’s problem, and could be the result of a ‘multiple reason,’” the editorial said. “The government must have discovered something that may jeopardize national security if this was them.

If that is the case, the editorial said, Chinese users should accept the fact the Gmail is censored in China.

Chinese Google withdrew from China in 2010 but Gmail began to have more and more users instead.

The Chinese government, however, never stopped its interruption again Gmail users. The last interruption, for example, took place prior to the 25^th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident, that many Chinese Gmail users could not log in to their own accounts.

The post Google Says It Has Nothing to Do With the Censorship in China appeared first on VR World.

Mozilla rolled out a new version of Firefox late Monday. While the newest version of the browser contains many new features such as the webRTC chat client Hello, the change users will notice most is the absence of Google as the browser’s default search engine.

As Mozilla and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) did not renew their agreement this year to place Google as the browser’s default search engine, Mozilla struck a deal with Yahoo instead. Neither Mozilla nor Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) have released the terms of the agreement between the two companies, but for the sake of context in 2013 Mozilla announced that it had received $275 million in revenue from Google that year.

Mozilla and Google had been partners for approximately 10 years, virtually since the first day of the Firefox browser’s existence. Relations between the two companies began to get frosty when Google launched its Chrome browser.

For now, the default search engine change will only impact users in North America. Users in Russia, Belarusian and Kazakh localizations will instead see Russian search engine Yandex as their default search engine within the browser.

Another update included in the new version of Firefox is webRTC chat client Hello. This provides an open-source chat, video and voice alternative to Skype or Google Chat.

The post Firefox 34 Marks The Beginning Of Mozilla’s Post-Google World appeared first on VR World.

Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Glass will be re-launching next year with new components, but it’s not quite clear if this version of the device will be available for retail sale.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Google will be launching a refreshed version of the Google Glass next year with an Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) chip, better battery life and more memory. It’s not entirely clear what chip will be powering the next-generation Google Glass but in all likelihood it will be the Intel Quark.

While many have speculated about when Google will release Glass to the public, after this report it still isn’t entirely clear when the wearable headset will make its public debut. The report notes that Google is targeting “hospital networks and manufacturers, while developing new workplace uses for the device.”

Google Glass, introduced in 2012, has been met with sharp criticism from privacy advocates. Many commercial establishments have banned the use of Google Glass on the premises and the term “Glasshole” has entered the lexicon of many.

However, re-launching the device as something to enhance workplace productivity rather than a consumer electronics device might be the ticket Google needs to reboot the device.

The post Google to Launch Refreshed Glass in 2015 appeared first on VR World.

Thanksgiving is a day for turkey. Black Friday is a day for statistics. Traffic on Thanksgiving from mobile devices edged just over 52 percent of all online traffic, while Black Friday mobile traffic dipped just below 50 percent. According to 24/7 Wall St, sales from mobile devices on Black Friday were about 30 percent higher than last year, accounting for 28 percent of that day’s online sales. Thanksgiving Day sales were below those of the widely hyped day that follows indigestion.Those online shoppers live mostly on the East Coast with Los Angeles wedged in the middle of New York City, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Chicago. Smartphones accounted for 35 percent of all on-line traffic, but tablets led the charge in sales numbers and dollars spent by $18.95.

The Apple platform outdistanced that of Google with Apple products typically being higher priced than Google’s. IBM Data reports as Average Order Value: ”iOS users averaged $121.86 per order compared to $98.07 for Android users, a difference 24.3 percent.” The data shows as Online Sales: “iOS sales accounted for 21.9 percent of total online sales, nearly quadruple that of Android, which drove 5.8 percent of all online sales.” According to comScore, Apple has 42 percent of the market, and Android has 52 percent. However, Android’s market share advantage pales beside iOS popularity.

In general, all online sales were higher than those of last year. Department stores sold an average of just over $143. Health and beauty’s average order was just under $73. Apparel’s average ticket online sale slide to just under $115, while home goods had the highest average order – $238.46.

We’ll have to wait to see what Cyber Monday brings after all the online sales that have already taken place over the weekend.

The post Black Friday Mobile Sales Top Online Traffic appeared first on VR World.

Is your recently updated Nexus 5 or SHIELD tablet feeling slow after the Lollipop update? You probably are going to need to do a factory reset.

Keep in mind that if you do a factory reset you will lose all locally stored data that hasn’t been backed up to the cloud. That usually means music files, photos (if you don’t have Google+ auto backup enabled), app settings and authorizations and other settings. Most of these things will be saved for you if you are using all of Google’s cloud services, but local music and other files will not be backed up so back those up before you do a factory reset.

In order to do a factory reset, all you have to do is go to the settings potion of the phone, find the Backup and Reset option and then hit Factory data reset. Your phone will prompt you to make sure you want that option and then it will restart after you confirm and reset the phone to factory defaults, which are now going to be the Android Lollipop defaults.

Recently, a lot of phones have been getting updates to Android 5.0 Lollipop and the list is only growing. A lot of users that have updated their Android 4.4.4 Kit Kat devices are reporting that their devices are appearing to perform slower and less responsive after the update. I had this happen with both my Nexus 5 and my SHIELD tablet and a factory reset made both devices as fast as before the update.

The great thing about Android Lollipop that a lot of people haven’t really experienced yet (because most people haven’t had to update their device and do a reset) is that you can completely wipe your device and the Android backup actually does backup all of your apps that were previously installed. In the past, this feature partially worked for me and I didn’t entirely trust it as a result. So, when I did a factory reset of the SHIELD tablet, I was prepared to re-install everything but instead I re-installed nothing and the tablet did it all on its own.

A lot of people are speculating that people are experiencing this issue due to the fact that the OTA files on the phone or tablet were not properly wiped from the phone or tablet’s memory and as a result are causing some sort of an interface lagginess and overall system sluggishness. After all, the OTA is a fairly large file for both devices. There are also speculations that the reason may be some applications that are unoptimized for Lollipo but those are fairly unjustified because after a factory reset those apps return and performance is still fast.

The interesting thing is that it doesn’t actually affect overall system performance as much as we thought, as when we had originally gotten the SHIELD tablet it had performance of 4579 in Futuremark’s PCMark Android benchmark. After the Android 5.0 lollipop update, it went up to 5127 points even with the lagginess and after the factory reset it went up to 5322, which means that when the Android 5.0 lollpop update is applied correctly the SHIELD tablet gets  20% performance bump, not the 15% we had seen.

So if your newly updated Android device is feeling sluggish or slow after the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, then you should seriously consider doing a factory reset as one of the first options before you waste too much time on other things.

The post Nexus 5 or SHIELD Tablet Feeling Slow after Lollipop? appeared first on VR World.

We’ve made up a list of our favorite Android phones of 2014 and they are all some of the best phones that money can buy in 2014. Now that all of the major phones have launched for the year and the holiday shopping season is upon us, there is no reason not to help you find the right phone for you or a loved one.

LG G3

LG’s G3 is probably one of our favorite Android phones of this year for multiple reasons. This is because The LG G3 has a fantastic 5.5″ 2560 x 1440 display and a laser fast 13 MP (literally uses a laser for focus) camera that grabs fantastic photos in both light and dark scenarios. Any camera that can take great photos in the dark is going to be a great all around camera as a rule of thumb. The thing that makes the LG G3 so great is also the fact that the phone itself has almost no bezel on the sides of the phone which makes it feel like there is almost no phone and all screen. As such, the LG G3 has the same screen size as the iPhone 6+ but a much much smaller body and as a result is more comfortable to hold. In addition to having one of the highest resolution displays of any phone to date, LG also gives the LG G3 expandable memory and a removable battery which is a big deal to a lot of users.

The LG G3 also has a Snapdragon 801 and great battery life thanks to the 3000 mAh battery even though it does have a fairly large and power consuming display. On Verizon’s network the LG G3 easily lasts over a day of normal usage and with Wi-Fi could last you up to 2 days. The only drawback of the LG G3 is the fact that it lacks a good speaker or front-facing speakers like the HTC One M8, one of its competitors. However, the G3’s biggest weapon is also price… even though Samsung and HTC launched before LG did with the LG G3, LG’s pricing was so competitive (both on and off contract) that it forced Samsung and HTC to drop their prices in order to compete which immediately resulted in lower prices for consumers regardless of their choice.

The post Top 5 Android Phones of 2014 appeared first on VR World.

The AT&T (NYSE:T) carrier version of the Google Nexus 6 and has been found to be SIM-locked and a tethering check built into the ROM.

With the release of the Google Nexus 6, came the release of individual carrier versions of the device as well, those include T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint.  The Nexus line of devices that have been put out by Google with a stock Android experience.  Now with the Nexus 6 AT&T version it was revealed last night that the device is branded with the AT&T logo, both on the back of the phone and the boot screen.  Now there are revelations that there has been the inclusion of items from AT&T to lock down the phone.  First off the device is SIM-locked and will only be able to be unlocked with a code from the carrier after the AT&T contract is over or the device is paid in full, alternatively there are third parties that sell unlock codes if you are willing to pay for them.

The second problem that was found was that there is a tethering check that checks for a tethering subscription on the users plan.  This will prevent the device from sharing its connection via Wi-Fi if there is no provision for tethering on the customer’s plan.  What makes things worse is that the check is built into the roots of the Android Nexus 6 at the AOSP level, and this will mean that if you have any Nexus 6 (not just AT&T) the check will be done if there is an AT&T SIM card being used.  The third issue is that the ringtones are stored in a separate partition called “oem“, a part that will not be able to be removed.  The section may be able to be removed with root access or a custom ROM.

Though the device is supposed to be providing a pure Android experience that the Nexus line is known for, the addition of such carrier add-ons definitely will tarnish that pristine feel.  These issues will no doubt be wiped away for those that like to install custom ROMs on their phones and tinker with the inner workings. But it is highly unlikely that for the standard user these issues will be overcome easily. Not to mention that any OTA updates to the Android operating system beyond Android 5.0 Lollipop will likely take longer for AT&T to qualify and verify due to having their own customizations. This almost entirely invalidates the purpose of the Nexus platform which is that whenever Google releases the update to the Android OS, the Nexus users almost immediately start to get it.

Editor’s Take (Anshel):

Keep in mind that T-Mobile’s Nexus 6 has none of the bloatware that AT&T’s version has and it will work on AT&T without any problems. Furthermore, if you buy the Nexus 6 direct from Google Play or T-Mobile you should have no problems activating the phone with a Verizon SIM card and using it on their network as well. The beauty of the Nexus 6 is that it will work on virtually every network. These AT&T ‘customizations’ are similar to what Google did with the Galaxy Nexus and removing Google Wallet and that was already a huge deal and had a lot of people in arms. AT&T’s move with the Nexus 6 is arguably much much worse because it doesn’t only reduce the customer’s ability to choose, but it also reduces the functionality of the device and does not make that aware to people looking to buy the Nexus 6 for AT&T. The fact that they restrict tethering, SIM card access and put in their own ringtones clearly is a breach of what Nexus is about and AT&T should be ashamed of what they’ve done. Google is not without fault here either, after all, they are ultimately the final deciders of whether they want to have the Nexus 6 on AT&T in its current form, and they somehow believe that this is okay.

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Yahoo (NASDAQ: YAHOO) and Mozilla announced Thursday that they had reached a deal that would place Yahoo as the default search engine inside Mozilla’s desktop and mobile browsers for the next five years.

“Google has been the Firefox global search default since 2004. Our agreement came up for renewal this year, and we took this as an opportunity to review our competitive strategy and explore our options,” Mozilla CEO Chris Beard said in a blog post. “In evaluating our search partnerships, our primary consideration was to ensure our strategy aligned with our values of choice and independence, and positions us to innovate and advance our mission in ways that best serve our users and the Web.”

It should be noted that this deal is only for the US, as Mozilla explained in a blog post.

“In most countries, including the UK,  Firefox users will not see a change. In the US, Yahoo will become the default search, Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia,” a company spokesperson said.

Since the inception of the Firefox, Google has been the default browser of Firefox. This relationship has brought Mozilla the bulk of its revenue, accounting for nearly 84% of the Foundation’s income in 2010. As Google’s Chrome browser rose in prominence and popularity, the relationship between Google and Mozilla began to grow testy.

In 2011, as Google and Mozilla’s search engine deal was coming up for renewal, Google fired a number of volleys at Mozilla in the form of commissioned report outlining why Chrome was a much better browser platform. However, a rival report found that there were serious methodological errors in the report’s analysis.

“Accuvant disabled highly relevant portions of non-Google browsers’ protection without noting the impact on the overall results,” noted the report. “This error in testing resulted in an erroneously negative assessment of the browsers’ protection capabilities, since some browsers will only block malware during or after download and before execution.

Yahoo, which has struggled to grow in the shadow of Google, naturally welcomed the news.

“At Yahoo, we believe deeply in search,” said CEO Marissa Mayer in a blog post. “It’s an area of investment and opportunity for us. It’s also a key growth area for us”.

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With the holidays approaching fast and the sales that come with it many people will be getting new notebooks this holiday season.  Researching what the best notebooks out there are takes time and we though we could help out by giving you our choices in five different categories of notebooks.  They are gaming, ultraportable, Chromebook, business, and Apple MacBook.  With the latest computer parts in these notebooks it will be certain that they will be able to earn there keep for quite some time.  There are many things to consider when looking for a notebook and budget is a big one.  Most of these choices are going to be in the higher end range since they perform better.

Gaming Notebook: MSI Computer GT72  Dominator Pro with GTX 980M – $2,299

This gaming notebook is the top of the line from MSI, and it does not disappoint.  Equipped with Intel i7-4710HQ, 16GB of DDR3-1600, a 128GB SSD, and a Nvidia GTX 980M 8GB, this will tear through any recent and upcoming game.  The best thing about the GT72 Dominator Pro is that MSI has taken steps to ensure that you can update the graphics down the line when new and better GPUs come out.  This means that the investment made in this computer will last a lot longer than comparable notebooks that are stuck with their graphics for the life of the product. If you are wanting some more speed from the notebook then throw in four identical M.2 SSDs inside and put them in RAID 0 for read/write speeds of up to 1600MB/s.  From experience with MSI’s SuperRAID as it is called I can attest to how massive of an improvement that speeds like this can be, it makes using the notebook just so much more enjoyable.  You can even attach three monitors to the notebook with two mini-displayport and one HDMI outputs.  The keyboard feels like no other notebook keyboard and is made by the gaming company SteelSeries. Bottom line is that if this is in your budget and you are a gamer or even a power user, I have little doubt that you will love this notebook.

Apple Notebook: 15″ 2.5GHz MacBook Pro with Retina display – $2,374.99

There is no denying it, Apple makes good notebooks and they are arguably the best notebooks for running Windows on as well.  The Retina display will allow for better multi-tasking with various windows as the resolution gives lots of screen real estate.  The Retina display will be great for those who edit photos or video as the display will reproduce colors very well. The construction of the MacBook Pro is amazing and the fit and finish are things that other companies could learn a thing or two from.  The choice with the 2.5GHz Intel i7 was made for what would be the most capable and powerful option with a reasonable price.  At Apple you can customize the MacBook Pro with up to a 1TB SSD and a 2.8GHz Intel i7.

Ultraportable Notebook: Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro – $1,382.99

The 2-in-1 Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro is the latest model in the Yoga line and features an amazing watchband style hinge.  The hinge is made up of hundreds of individual pieces that allows the notebook to flex like no other and fold to use it in different positions.  The screen is a high resolution (3200×1800) IPS touchscreen that will reproduce colors very well and look much better than lower quality panels.  If needing something very light, portable, and a long battery life then this notebook should be on your list of ones to check out.  The stylish Yoga 3 Pro is one of the most stunning designs out now and is powered by the brand new Intel Core M processor.

 Chromebook – Toshiba Chromebook 2 1080p $329.99

Chromebooks are a new breed of notebook, and people are really loving them.  Chromebooks generally are affordable, light, and have long battery life making it an easy choice for those who need something portable.  The best thing about this model is likely the 1080p IPS panel that will look much better than panels that are in other models.  Powering the notebook is an Intel Celeron processor, and while not very powerful it will get the job done and sip power giving longer battery life.  The battery should be good for up to 8 hours and 45 minutes.  The audio has been fine-tuned by Skullcandy meaning that it should deliver much nicer sound than the standard Chromebook.  This will be useful if you enjoy listening to streaming music while you surf the web or do work.  The 802.11ac Wi-Fi is blazing fast and will allow you to get better coverage over other Chromebooks.

Business Notebook: Lenovo X1 Carbon – $1,619

When looking for a business notebook it is wise to choose something that is portable and light so you can easily get work done no matter where you are working.  The X1 Carbon also offers great battery life allowing up to 9 hours from a single charge.  Lenovo is the the most used PC maker for businesses and they sure do know what they are doing with its lineup that is geared for productivity.  The keyboard is surprisingly good and has back-lighting making it easier to get work done while on that red-eye to an important meeting or at home in the evening.  The integrated fingerprint reader should help simplify secure login by allowing you to simply swipe a finger over it.  When it comes to a business notebook, choosing Lenovo is a wise choice that millions have made before.

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Today was a day of good news for all Nvidia Shield Tablet owners and potential owners.  Nvidia announced today that the Lollipop 5.0 update and the new GRID gaming service are coming to the Shield Tablet in an update on November 18th.  Nvidia Also confirmed that the Green Box they teased yesterday is in fact Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode One, and Portal.

Today via the Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) blog the company let people know about the upcoming capabilities and content they have made for its Shield Tablet.  The news of the Lollipop 5.0 update that we have known for a while was confirmed to be scheduled for release on November 18th.  The update brings Android’s new material design and performance benefits.  The update will also have an update for the popular Nvidia Dabbler application that has updates in the user interface, full support for layers, and interestingly the ability to stream the app via Twitch (which the tablet already supports for games).  The blog also confirmed that Half-Life Episode One is coming to Android, and it has been optimized for the Nvidia Shield Tablet.  This game will be part of the new Green Box bundle that will be included free with the 32GB/LTE version of the Shield Tablet.  Also confirmed were new games that are optimized for the Shield Tablet.  These games are OddWorld: Stranger’s Wrath, Pure Pool, Strike Suit Zero, and Turbo Dismount.

The biggest surprise was the announcement of the long in-beta GRID gaming service.  This will harnesses state-of-the-art Nvidia GPU servers to deliver a GeForce GTX gaming experience on SHIELD devices.  The lineup already includes 20 AAA game titles including Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands 2, and Psychonauts.  The service will be adding new titles every week.  Essentially this will be like Netflix for games that users can stream right to the Shield devices to play.  But the best part is that the GRID service will be free on Shield devices (both the tablet and the portable) through June 30, 2015.  This is great that Nvidia is giving users more than 7 months of the gaming service free for owners who have already bought devices. This will help make up for the fact that the Green Box is only available with new purchases of the 32GB/LTE tablet and will possibly encourage people to buy SHIELD devices if they weren’t already planning to.

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Here is the daily roundup from Japanese consumer tech and tech business websites for November 12, 2014.

TDK launches high bias voltage, high effective capacitance ‘singing’ capacitors
TDK Corporation announces the release of a new line of CeraLink ceramic capacitors aimed for switching regulators and snubber circuits. While standard ceramic capacitors often sacrifice effective capacitance to achieve high bias voltage, this new capacitor features both high bias voltage and effective capacitance.

Fuji Electric showcases wearable tech for long-distance work support systems
Fuji Electric and Fuji IT have recently opened a reference exhibit for a new glass-type wearable tech at Tokyo’s Monozukuri NEXT 2014 event. The new wearable concept was designed to aid workers at job sites, by combining human instruction and cloud-based data to provide active assistance via transmitted information.

Acer releases new entry-level Aspire E in Japan
Acer Japan announces the launch of a new Aspire E (ES1-512-F14D) notebook PC by the end of this week. This Aspire E is an entry level 15.6-inch screen laptop aimed at casual personal users, and will be catered with an introduction price of about $330.00.

Google opens gadget exhibit at Roppongi
Google recently showcased all of its recent products and developed gadgets at a ‘touch and try’ event, which was held at a café in Roppongi, Tokyo. Among the items exhibited were the Nexus 6, Nexus 9, Android Wear, a few Chromebook models and Chromecast.

IBM proposal introduces new program for Japanese middle school students
IBM Japan held a seminar and workshop earlier this week that centered on the topic of societal and education-based changes in accordance to changes in technology. Together with the Association of Corporation and Education (ACE), the company proposed a new educational program aimed at Japanese middle school students, which introduces big data analytics into the system.

KDDI’s historic trans-pacific feat wins IEEE milestone award
Major Japanese telecom company KDDI (formerly KDD) receives recognition as it is awarded with the IEEE milestone for its participation in the development and deployment of the historical Trans Pacific Cable 1 (TRANSPAC-1 or TPC-1) network.

HP estimates Japan cyber crime losses at $6 million
According to a research made by HP Japan, at least 31 major companies and business in Japan suffered financial losses due to cyber crime. With an increase of almost 76% over the past 3 years, the total losses were estimated to be about $6 million.

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