At this time last year, Samsung was enjoying a record operating profit of $9.6 billion for its third quarter and shipping Galaxy phones seemingly as fast as it could make them. Now? The company announced its operating profit for the period will be down to between $3.6 and $4 billion, which would be its fourth straight quarter of declines. Of course, that’s nothing to sneeze at but it represents a drop of 60 percent in just a year. We don’t have specific sales stats, but industry analysts mentioned by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg see its phone sales squeezed at the high-end by Apple’s latest iPhones, and at the low end by numerous Chinese competitors like Xiaomi and Lenovo. Samsung’s next steps — after launching the new Galaxy Note 4 — include growing its businesses making memory chips, processors and displays. Samsung announced today that it’s building a new $14.7 billion chip plant in Korea — maybe it can get prices of the next Galaxy Alpha down enough to get sales back on a growing track.
Seen a few new sources showing up in the “news” section of a Google search lately? It isn’t just you. Mountain View is pulling more websites into its news listings now including the likes of Reddit, as spotted by Search Engine Land. Google says that regardless of where it comes from, any content could show up under the “In the news” portion of a search — even videos, press releases and social media posts. Brin and Co. note that this is an effort to expand the voices possible to give users the answer they’re looking for online. Some examples Search Engine Land notes are the Yoast website-optimization blog popping up for “website maintenance” and the internet’s front page appearing in searches for “TSA” and “Dunkin’ Donuts.” From what we can tell, however, that stops once you do an actual search under the Google News tab — perfect if your definition of news is a bit stricter than Mountain View’s.
[Image credit: Shutterstock]
Interested in upgrading to the Galaxy Alpha or Xperia Z3? You’ve come to the right place. Today, we take both handsets for a spin, journey through the historical roots of Assassin’s Creed: Unity, play a whole bunch of the new Smash Bros. for 3DS, and more. Read on for all our news highlights from the last 24 hours.
Engadget Daily: Galaxy Alpha and Xperia Z3 reviews, the new ‘Smash Bros.’ and more!
You can replace your Nintendo 3DS’ outer hull anytime you want (provided you’re willing to buy a new system), but that system menu has always been that same void of transparent white space. Not anymore. The handheld’s latest update (much like the PS Vita’s from last week) gifts the 3DS with five basic color themes in red, blue, yellow, pink and black. Looking for something more complex? You’ll have to pay for it — the new theme shop sells character and pattern-based themes for $0.99-$1.99 a piece, including one that harkens back to Nintendo’s origins selling Hanafuda cards. Oh, and if you want to show off your redesigned 3DS, Nintendo’s thought of that too: pressing up / down while holding the Y button now takes a screenshot of the 3DS upper and lower screens, respectively.
Read the Full Story 0 Comments Share
If you use Google Voice for your text messages, you’re well adjusted to its biggest flaw: the service just doesn’t play nice with most carriers’ MMS settings. Today, that’s changing — Google says that the service now supports MMS from nearly 100 carriers in North America, including AT&T, Bell Canada, Rogers, Telus and more (but not Verizon). Unfortunately, Mountain View wasn’t able to provide us with a full list of supported providers, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. Now if only we could get the ability to send MMS messages, too.
It might take some time before space taxis become the real deal. Yet, that doesn’t take away from the fact they’re extraordinarily amazing in their current stage. One of the most well-known programs is, of course, NASA’s Orion capsule, which has been in development for a few years now. Obviously, putting Orion through its paces is key for the space administration. So, what you see above is a test model of the spacecraft while it floats inside the USS Anchorage, a US Navy ship. Reuters snapped the image after Orion was found during a recovery test near the Californian coast, as NASA prepares by simulating different scenarios ahead of the capsule’s first official unmanned launch.
[Image credit: Reuters/Mike Blake]
Now that Apple has resolved issues with Healthkit, a ton of new apps are starting to support it. Fitness tracking and health monitoring are becoming huge features that device makers want to take advantage of, and even Google is getting into the game with its own initiative called Google Fit. Are you using a combination of swanky hardware and smooth looking apps to stay in shape? Head over to the Engadget forums and share your favorite health tracking apps.
Syfy is now home to two zombie series but no one can replace the king — The Walking Dead returns on AMC Sunday night. Naturally, that also means the return of Talking Dead with Chris Hardwick, which we’ve grown to like. As we’ve settled into the new fall shows (Discovery’s Tethered is just about as good of a gimmick as their previous Naked and Afraid), this week has some big movie and video game releases. That includes the excellent Edge of Tomorrow aka Live Die Repeat starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and the 30th Anniversary release of The NeverEnding Story. Gamers have yet another excellent racer to look forward to in DriveClub on PS4 while Xbox One launches the innovative Project Spark. For your cross-platform enjoyment, there’s NBA 2K15 and Alien: Isolation. Hit the gallery or just look after the break to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).
Read the Full Story 0 Comments Share
Looks like it didn’t take long for the Shellshock security flaw to claim its first major victim. Yahoo has confirmed to both Future South Technologies and SecurityWeek that hackers used the command line exploit to breach at least two of its servers. Future South’s Jonathan Hall found that the Romania-based intruders were using Shellshock to slowly hijack servers (including those of other companies) and build up an “arsenal” for hitting increasingly valuable targets, particularly Yahoo Games.
Read the Full Story 0 Comments Share
Sure, you could load a pair of turntables with a couple of vinyl records to hone those DJ skills, but what about that old cassette collection? Well, one inventive fellow created his own set-up using the tapes to achieve the same goal. Jeremy Bell created The ScrubBoard: a pair of cassette tape sections stretched across a board (hence the name) for scratching with a pair of tape heads. The two heads have been removed from Walkman-like cassette players, and the portable devices remain plugged into a sound system of some sort for audio. As Fact Mag points out, similar setups have been constructed before, but if you’ve got a stack of tapes and a couple of the portable players lying around, this certainly seems like a worthwhile weekend project. Bell is also looking to raise funds to create a actual product based on the project, which you can see in action after the break.
Read the Full Story 0 Comments Share
This article is automatically posted by WP-AutoPost : WordPress AutoBlog plugin
Keywords Replacement, WP-AutoPost
Engadget | Technology News, Advice and Features
No comments:
Post a Comment