Those who have been complaining that the design of the iPhone doesn’t change much throughout generations might be in for a big shock. Apparently, Apple is investing its efforts into a mind-blowing new iPhone design.

Uncovered this week, the patent recently awarded to Apple by the US Patent & Trademark Office, details a wrap-around AMOLED display. If implemented with the iPhone, the technology would allow for the creation of a screen-only smartphone. Imagine how that would look and feel like. The feeling is certainly going to be a major part of this new futuristic display, as it would rely only on touch gestures with no physical buttons being available.

Basically, what Apple is trying to do, is use the whole extent of the physical surface of the device for displaying information purposes. In order to achieve such an impressive and aesthetically pleasing feat, the device will have to be made out of a special type of glass so it could offer transparency. Not to mention it will have to be strong enough as to hold everything together.

Apple could go on to use the technology to offer 3D abilities to its users. It could superimpose two flexible displays and stream content on both of them.

"In this way, an illusion of depth perception can be presented mimicking a 3D experience."

The patent is known as “Electronic device with wrap around display” and has been filed back in 2011. Another similar patent named “Electronic Devices With Flexible Displays” has also been spotted last year. This all seems to indicate that Apple is clearly planning a device along these lines.

Source: TechCrunch

The incredibly successful Halfbrick (Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride, Age of Zombies) has today announced its next game, Fish Out Of Water. The game features a daredevil group of feisty fish, who want to escape the ocean and see the world from a totally different perspective. The gameplay involves an entirely one-touch interface, where players throw their fish to send them soaring through the clouds and skipping over the water. Featured characters include speed demon Rocket, Micro the whale, and Errol the vacant blowfish. In each round, you have three throws, and get to choose the best fish to suit the conditions of the ocean, which change every hour, from calm to tempestuous thunderstorm. You might even get to see geysers, glaciers, and bouncing jellyfish! After your three throws, the Crab Crew will rate your performance according to distance, number of skips, and other factors. This is a bit of a departure from Halfbrick, but doubtless it will be as successful as all their other games!

“We’re always pumped to get new games into the hands of our fans,” said Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride creator Luke Muscat. “Fish Out Of Water has been an amazing ride so far, keeping the simplicity of Halfbrick games intact but introducing a vibrant personality through all of our fishy characters. It’s a complete package and we’re almost ready to roll!”

Look for the game to land in the App Store very soon, for $0.99.

Source: Halfbrick

The next iPhone, which is most likely going to be the iPhone 5S, is strongly rumoured to have both a fingerprint reader and NFC payment technology included, with the two also said to be working in tandem in the new iPhone. BGR’s Jonathan Geller has written a very interesting and informative feature all about what NFC could mean for Apple, and it’s well worth your time, being an excellent investigation of Apple’s possible plans on the matter. Essentially, Geller says that it’s his belief that Apple doesn’t just intend to use NFC as a means of tapping and paying for goods and services, but also as a payment processor, or, as he puts it, “the intermediary in between a merchant and the credit card companies.” Basically, you will pay for goods and services via your iTunes account, with Apple getting a slice of the commission paid for each purchase. What would make this even more effective for Apple, says Geller is that Apple would be able to pretty much do away with fraudulent purchases and chargebacks, simply by dint of the added security of using fingerprint verification for each transaction. All very interesting stuff, and Geller very much knows what he’s talking about when it comes to Apple, so he could be right on the money, so to speak!


Source: http://bgr.com/2013/03/19/apple-mobile-payments-analysis-itunes-371912/?utm_source=featuredposts-widget&utm_medium=hom

Telltale Games announced today that it is holding a worldwide sale on its award-winning multi-platform game, The Walking Dead, and that includes the iOS version. For the next few weeks, from now until Wednesday, April 10, fans of the smash hit TV show can get the game series at a discounted price, with episodes 2-5 being priced at $2.99 each, or 40% off, and the Multi-Pack bundle of episodes 2-5 costs $9.99, or more than 30% off. The first episode is free to download. The Walking Dead: The Game, has received more than 80 Game of the Year awards from multiple media outlets, including Spike TV, USA Today, Mashable, Wired, Yahoo! Games, GamesRadar, and Destructoid, to name but a few! In particular, the iOS version of the series was named Best App Ever by the Mobile World Congress, won a BAFTA for Best Mobile and Handheld title, and was this week voted Best Adventure/RPG, Most Innovative Game, and iOS Game of the Year at the PocketGamer Awards in San Francisco.

Click here to download the game: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/walking-dead-the-game/id524731580?mt=8

Source: Telltale Games

Great news, classic gaming fans, as Games Radar reports today that SEGA has just announced at a press event at GDC in San Francisco that it will be releasing an iOS version of its classic on-rails survival-horror shooter, House of the Dead Overkill. SEGA also released some screenshots from House of the Dead Overkill: The Lost Reels, and some tiny titbits of information, with Games Radar reporting that the iOS game will not be a straight port of the Wii and PS3 versions of the game, but will be more of a remix. Apparently, you will not initially be able to tap to shoot in the game, as this feature will only be unlocked by a first playthrough of the game, until that point, you’ll only be able to shoot by using the accelerometer or virtual joystick. Sounds a bit strange, but SEGA has scarcely put a foot wrong with its mobile offerings, with Sonic Dash being just the latest example of SEGA’s excellent handling of a classic franchise in the mobile gaming age. Of course, it should be noted that House of the Dead Overkill is itself a remake of the mid-nineties arcade and SEGA Saturn game.


Source: House of the Dead Overkill: The Lost Reels heading to iOS/Android | GamesRadar
SEGA

Journalism may never be same again. Not if British high school goer Nick D’Aloisio’s gets away with it.

The 17-year-old might be one of the richest teen agers in the whole world. He just sold the iPhone app he created when he was 15 for the whopping sum of $30 million. With investors like Asthon Kutcher and Wendi Murdoch, Yahoo had no second thoughts when it struck the deal with the teen.

The app is called “Summly” and it takes your average article, composes a 400 word summary out of it and then delivers it on your iPhone. We can see how this application might have been useful for a kid in high school, but the repercussions of this thing going viral are huge.

Nevertheless, Yahoo is said not to use the app per se. Instead, it will try to integrate its algorithms into a project it has had for so​​me time. Sadly, this project too involves the death of journalism and creativity. Apparently, Yahoo is working on replacing writers with robo-journalists who’d work fast and efficient. Unlike their human counterparts. That’s one theory. The other one revolves around new Yahoo CEO Marrisa Mayer and her fresh strategy of herding the mailing service towards the mobile ecosystem. Under her watch, the company purchased some small mobile startups.

D’Aloisio is now hailed as one of the hopes of the new generation of entrepreneurs. For the moment, he is still living in England with his father, who works at Morgan Stanley and his lawyer mom. The teen is planning to go to university at Oxford. The future certainly looks bright for the young man.

Source: CBS News

Here's a follow-up article from Maura's Story. She shared the best news, which was that the iPhone is now coming to T-Mobile! Yay! This article was requested from some of our other sites and just fleshes out a few more of the details just to add to her great work!

So, the big press event for T-Mobile just went down this morning and we must say, our minds were blown along with the rest of the journalistic community. T-Mobile is coming out swinging hardcore at their competitors. It is obvious they do not want to remain the fourth place competitor, and with their new plans they likely won't remain that way for long. They truly are taking this "Un-Carrier" thing seriously and its refreshing to see.

First, let's start with the first shock of the event. This was the rough language of the T-Mobile CEO, CEO John Legere, as he made the presentation. He was not holding back at all and his impassioned speech in which he called out the rest of the U.S. carriers really got our attention. Here's are a few slightly censored quotes mashed together that will make it quite obvious why,

"Stop the bullsh*t! This is the biggest crock of sh*t in my life. Do you have any idea how much you're paying? Carriers are really nice to you... once every 23 months. If you come to T-Mobile, you've signed your last contract. If we suck this month, drop us. Go somewhere else."

This was obviously shocking to hear such candor and unfiltered language at an official press conference. He made it quite clear that consumers shouldn't be locked in to two year contracts and that T-Mobile wants to treat its customers with more respect in this regard. With that said, here are a few details regarding T-Mo's new plans and the way the purchasing of the phones will work.

Both Classic and Value Plans offer Unlimited talk and text plus 500MB of data monthly for $50 monthly. You can choose from a selection of additional data options that start at 2GB for an additional $10 per month ($60 total) running up to 12GB of data for an additional $60 ($110 total). Those plans include tethering and mobile HotSpot use. If that is not important to you, a total of $70 a month will give you totally unlimited talk, text and data, but will not let you use the HotSpot feature

So, that's the way the monthly pricing plans will work. It looks like the best option for an individual who doesn't need a hotspot is just $70 bucks per month for unlimited everything. The most important detail is that these are not a contract, you can drop them any time you want.

Now, for the phone purchase details. The way it works is actually pretty clever, yet quite simple. Upfront you pay the initial price of $99 down for any of their premium devices, and then a monthly fee of $20 for 20 months with no interest until its paid off. If you mash the two together, that comes out to $90 bucks per month, but you are only obligated to pay off the device, either in payments or all at once. At any time you can take you device somewhere else if you wish as long as you continue to pay for it or pay it off. Doing the math, that $90 bucks is still cheaper than the other carriers, and after less than two years you will be substantially cheaper at just $70 bucks a month, unless you want a new phone at that time. Mr. Lepere claims this is a total of $1000 dollars in savings over the same two year period compared to something similar at AT&T. It's hard to argue that kind of value.

Of course, how good is a cheap plan if you don't have a good data network? That was another thing T-Mobile shared. Apparently they plan to put their newfound investment cash from parent company Deutsche Telekom to good use. T-Mobile claims they will have LTE rolled out to 100 Million Americans by the middle of the year, and another 200 Million (nearly the entire country) by the end of the year. They just flipped the switch on LTE in the following cities already: Baltimore, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Jose, and Washington D.C. That's welcome news too.

Finally, they shared several new phones and dates for those phones during the press event. T-Mobile will finally get getting the iPhone 5 on April 12th for that same $99 bucks upfront and $20 bucks for 20 months. They will also be getting the HTC... [Read More]

AppleInsider reports today on new figures from industry tracking company IDC that show that Apple is gaining on Samsung. Specifically, IDC’s new Smart Connected Device Tracker report shows that while Samsung still leads the connected device market with a 21.2% share, Apple has closed the gap, and now has a 20.3% unit shipment share. AppleInsider says that it is the release of the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini, and their incredible success, that has helped Apple achieve this. As far as the revenue from the market is concerned, Apple is way out ahead, with a 30.7% share of revenues in the fourth quarter, with Samsung some way behind with 20.4% in the fourth quarter. IDC’s figures reveal an estimate of 378 million connected devices (which include desktop computers, notebooks, tablets, and smartphones) shipped, making a revenue total of over $168 billion. IDC also says that by 2017, it thinks the worldwide smart connected device market will reach 2.2 billion units shipped, and revenues of $814.3 billion.


Source: IDC: Apple to approach Samsung in connected devices, tablets to surpass PCs

Pocket Gamer reports today on a mysterious new teaser tweet that has just been posted by Gameloft on its Twitter page, which is basically just a picture of two very Iron-Man-looking eye slits, with no words other than the date, 27.03. 13. As Pocket Gamer points out, you don’t have to be as clever or as rich as Tony Stark to work out that this is most likely Gameloft’s not-so-subtle way of saying that it will be releasing a new Iron Man 3 game for iOS tomorrow. There is no other information to be had at the moment about the game, but Pocket Gamer notes that Gameloft’s previous Iron Man games have been third-person fighter games, so is that what we can expect this time around? We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out. The Iron Man 3 movie will hit movie theatres on May 3, starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, and Rebecca Hall.


Source: Is Gameloft preparing to release Iron Man 3 tie-in tomorrow? | Iron Man 3 news | Android | Pocket Gamer

Well it certainly has been a long time coming, but today T-Mobile in the US finally announced that it will be offering Apple’s iPhone 5 to its customers from April 12. AppleInsider reports that T-Mobile made the long-awaited announcement today as part of its “Uncarrier” campaign, whereby it is trying to set itself aside from rival carriers such as AT&T and Verizon. What makes T-Mobile different from the other carriers that have the iPhone appears to be its package, as it will be offering a 16GB iPhone 5 for just $99 upfront, provided that you sign up for 20 more months for $20. As AppleInsider notes, the reason it has taken so long for T-Mobile to get the iPhone, despite the fact that it has two million plus iPhone customers on its network, is because it uses the 1700MHz frequency for its 3G HSPA+ service, which gives the iPhone only a slow 2G connection. This has led to T-Mobile switching a good deal of its network to 1900MHz in order to support the iPhone, with that hard work now paying off with today’s announcement. Welcome to the family, T-Mobile!


Source: Apple's iPhone 5 debuts on T-Mobile April 12 with $99 upfront payment plan

The incredibly popular XCOM: Enemy Unknown is on its way to iOS devices this summer, according to a report on iDownload Blog today, which says that developer Firaxis and publisher 2K Games made the announcement this past weekend at PAX East in Boston, during a panel presentation. The turn-based tactical RPG already has a Mac version due for release on April 24, so an iOS-specific version is no surprise, and will doubtless delight the game’s many ardent fans. iDownload Blog reports that the game’s Lead Designer, Jake Solomon, told Joystiq that the iOS version of the popular game will not be freemium, unlike EA’s Real Racing 3, saying, “It’s going to be priced appropriately for what it is. It’s going to be a premium price point. It is the game. It is the full game.” Joystiq goes on to say that it thinks the XCOM iOS game could be priced similarly to The Walking Dead, which costs $15. They also have details of what DLC from the console versions will be included, stating that the Slingshot pack will not be available in the iOS version, but Elite Soldier DLC will be included.

Source: XCOM: Enemy Unknown iOS port due this summer, Mac build launches April 24

AppleInsider has today posted pictures that are said to be of the iPhone 5S’s home button flex and vibrator and flex. The pictures, which were posted on a Japanese forum and picked up by NWE, show simply the various parts, set against a plain white background. As AppleInsider says, the supposed home button looks similar to that of the iPhone 5, although its connectors and circuitry are very different. Each of the home button parts also bears a serial number, which AppleInsider says is another possible indication that the pictures are genuine. As far as the vibrational unit pictures are concerned, they do not have any serial numbers, or any other obvious means of identification, but they may also be genuine as they appeared on the same site as the home button pictures. There is no other information available about the supposed vibrational units, and the site has previously posted other pictures of supposed iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 parts.


Source: Purported Apple 'iPhone 5S' parts show home button, vibration