SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- When I bought my iPad three years ago, the tablet market was brand new. If you wanted a tablet, there was the iPad. And, er, that was it. Three years later, my iPad has slowed down to the point where it's more annoying than useful. I've jailbroken it and stripped it back to the bare essentials, removing software and music, but it simply doesn't do what I want it to do any more. So it's time for…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- The BlackBerry maker, formerly known as RIM, has been keen to talk up the global reception of the Z10 handsets, which were unveiled last month ahead of an initial launch in Canada and the UK. Chief executive Thorsten Heins was quick to declare the introduction of the Z10 a success, but his claims that stocks of the new phones were running low were met with scepticism as shops insisted they had "plenty" left. Earlier this month it…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Google+ released a number of small but noticeable visual updates to its mobile apps today, but that's not all. The site now supports animated GIFs for user profile photos in addition to within posts, as Google announced in an update this afternoon. The animated GIFs work on both Google+'s desktop and mobile views, though profile GIFs only show up as still images when they appear next to a user's post. The move comes on the heels of…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- 2013 is shaping up to be an inflection point in the smartphone space. According to market research firm IDC, smartphones will outsell feature phones for the first time ever this year and will go on to account for two-thirds of total mobile shipments by 2017. That continued shift away from feature phones toward smartphones will have a number of effects, most notably downward pressure on average selling prices for the devices and margins for device manufacturers.…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Apple is planning a "low-end iPhone" that will lack some of the extras found in the company's iPhone 5, one analyst claims. In a note to investors today, Amit Daryanani of RBC Capital Markets said that Apple plans to launch "multiple new phones" between June and July this year. According to AppleInsider, which obtained a copy of his investors note, Daryanani said in addition to a flagship handset that Apple will call the iPhone 5S, the company…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Google chairman Eric Schmidt has squashed rumors that the company will merge its Android and Chrome operating systems, telling attendees at Google's Big Tent event in India that the two platforms are "certainly going to remain separate for a very long time, because they solve different problems." The denial comes after Google unveiled a new Chrome Android statue on its Mountain View campus and announced its executive reshuffle, where Google VP of Chrome and Apps, Sundar Pichai, replaced…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- When Ford Motor shows off the latest version of its hybrid car at an Atlanta auto show this month, its drive train and other key parts will be products of a new development process that's taken hold across Corporate America and the world. Rather than using custom machine tools to build early prototypes of new parts, Ford is now using 3-D printing technology to design and test its engineers' latest ideas.The new method allows…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Not wowed by the HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4? One analyst says never fear -- Apple is preparing a killer feature for the iPhone 5S that will crush the notion that smartphones are becoming a commodity product like so many soybeans traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (or smartypants similes on gadget blogs). If you've been paying attention to the almost monthly march of big-time smartphone releases for the past year and a half, you may…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Samsung will unwrap its latest blockbuster smartphone, the Galaxy S4, at the Radio City music hall in New York on Thursday evening as the South Korean phonemaker tries to bring the fight to Apple's home market. With Samsung rumoured to have ordered a production run of 100m handsets and research firm Strategy Analytics predicting the S4 will ship 60m units by Christmas, Seoul is going head to head with Silicon Valley for dominance of smartphone…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Google on Tuesday acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people’s privacy during its Street View mapping project when it casually scooped up passwords, e-mail and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users. In agreeing to settle a case brought by 38 states involving the project, the search company for the first time is required to aggressively police its own employees on privacy issues and to explicitly tell the public how to fend…