Mike Beasley

Mobile media player Plex for Android has been updated today with support for automatic photo uploads from the camera roll. The feature requires a subscription to the Plex Pass service. The updated app allows users to automatically upload all photos from the camera roll to the Plex library for access on other devices…

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Chang Dong-hoon, Samsung’s head of mobile design, has stepped down from his position due to criticism of the Galaxy S5, according to Reuters. Chang will be replaced by the company’s current vice president of mobile design, Lee Min-hyouk. Lee joined Samsung’s executive team in 2010 after helping design the company’s Galaxy lineup.

Samsung is the largest manufacturer of Android devices in the world, and recently wrapped up a software patent lawsuit brought by Apple in which the Korean company was ordered to pay out just under $120 million for in which several Galaxy devices were found to infringe on Apple’s intellectual property.

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A store listing on Motorola’s website (via Droid Life) has given us an early look at the currently-unannounced Moto X+1, which will be available on AT&T whenever it’s finally made public. The phone looks very similar to the current Moto X, so most of the big changes to the device will presumably be under-the-hood.

There is at least one change being made to the outside of the phone. The X+1 recently showed up on the MotoMaker tool that allows users to build customized versions of the Moto X. According to the options on that website, the phone will be available with 25 different backplates to choose from.

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Jurors have finally reached a verdict in the latest patent spat between smartphone rivals Apple and Samsung. This trial will determine whether Samsung violated Apple’s technology patents, and, if they did, the extent of the damages incurred by Apple in losses to competing infringing devices. Apple has argued that it is owned over $2 billion in damages, and brought in several expert witnesses to testify on that point.

Earlier this month, we recapped the five key software patents that Apple claims Samsung violated. We’ve broken down the verdicts for each patent below. Samsung insists that Apple’s patents still haven’t been proven valid, so there’s a chance that some of these verdicts could be overturned on that basis in the future.

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Consumer rights group Hagens Berman has filed a new class-action lawsuit against Google alleging that the company’s rise to dominance in the search market was only driven by its inclusion as the default search option in Android, and that Google’s insistence that corporate Android licensees include the company’s first party software has artificially driven up the price of mobile phones.

To better explain exactly what the company is actually claiming, let’s break down a few quotes from the official press release on the lawsuit.

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A hidden video (embedded below) discovered on HP’s website by Notebook Italia shows off HP’s upcoming Slatebook 14. As the name implies, the machine comes with a 1080p 14″ touchscreen display. What’s really interesting about this computer is the software. Instead of the usual Windows or Chrome OS options, the Slatebook will reportedly run Android.

The machine has apparently been given Google’s blessing, since according to the video it will feature the Play Store and all of the company’s first-party apps, along with the entire catalog of third-party Android apps.

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Jony Ive and Marissa Mayer (right) eat pizza with other industry executives

Re/code reports that Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is planning an attempt at persuading Apple to switch its default iOS search engine from Google to her company’s own offering. According to Re/code’s sources, Mayer has built what she hopes will be a convincing arguement in favor of the change.

Yahoo! current powers the weather and stocks apps and Notification Center widgets found in iOS 7 as well as a few Siri functions, such as sports, but lost out on the chance to power Siri’s web search to Microsoft’s Bing. Both Yahoo! and Bing are included as optional search engines in the Safari browser, but the default selection is Google.

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Google has agreed to back a new initiative along with a host of Android manufacturers and all of the major U.S. cellular carriers that would require all smartphones manufactured after July 2015 to come with specific anti-theft features. The program is the latest attempt to prevent theft of smartphones, which some have blamed for increasing crime rates.

To this end, Google introduced the Android Device Manager application last year, allowing users to locate or wipe lost or stolen devices. Today’s agreement between the carriers and handset manufacturers essentially states that all parties will ship this type of system on new phones.

Specifically, the required anti-theft measures are broken into four kinds:

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The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is planning to announce its first entry to the smartphone market in June. The possibility of an Amazon phone has been a long-running rumor, but recently sources claimed that the company had partnered with HTC to finally produce the device.

Following the launch of the Fire TV earlier this month, the Amazon phone will mark the second major product category the online retailer hopes to invade in 2014. The phone will presumably run Google’s Android OS, which Amazon has relied on in the past to power its Kindle Fire tablets.

The Amazon device will reportedly feature a display capable of creating 3D images without the need for glasses, according to the WSJ report:

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Google is in the process of launching an all-new advertising campaign to promote YouTube, according to two reports from Ad Age. The campaign focuses on three specific video creators—Michelle Phan, Rosanna Pansino, and Bethany Mota—and will consist of several TV spots as well as some outdoor advertising (yes, that probably means there will be YouTube billboards).

Each ad will feature a different tagline that plays on the “You” in the YouTube logo to start a sentence related to the video creator in the ad, such as “You make confience THE must-have accessory,” as seen above at the end of one of Phan’s TV spots, or “You give cupcakes superpowers,” as appears on one of Pansino’s billboards. (Apparently super-powered cupcakes are a thing.)
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Samsung has just announced its newest Galaxy smartphone, the Ace Style. The new phone includes a 1.2 GHz dual-core CPU, a 5 MP rear camera, and a 4-inch display.

The device also ships with 4 GB of internal storage and support for up to 64 GB microSD cards. In terms of memory, it includes half a gigabyte of RAM. Samsung’s custom Android skin, TouchWiz Essence, will run on top of KitKat, the latest version of Android.

The Galaxy Ace Style will be available later this month in gray and white. Samsung hasn’t provided any pricing details yet.

Nest—which was recently acquired by Google—pulled its Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector from sale today and issued a letter from Tony Fadell, the company’s CEO about a serious potential safety issue that arose in testing. Nest is advising existing owners that a feature on the device that allows users to disable the detector with the wave of a hand will be automatically disabled.

During recent laboratory testing of the Nest Protect smoke alarm, we observed a unique combination of circumstances that caused us to question whether the Nest Wave (a feature that enables you to turn off your alarm with a wave of the hand) could be unintentionally activated. This could delay an alarm going off if there was a real fire.

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnK3Swwv08k]

Google has added a whole host of new Street View images to its Maps service today of the Angkor Wat region in the Cambodian capital of Siem Reap. This includes the exterior, interior, and even close-ups of the carvings on over one hundred temples. Google says it has added over 90,000 new images to its database of the Angkor temples.

From the Google Maps blog:

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3NXNnoGr3Y]

In keeping up with tradition, Google started rolling out its annual April Fool’s Day pranks last 🌇 and has continued into the early 🌅. A new post on the Chrome blog announced the availability of a new Google 🇺🇸🔄🇫🇷 feature that converts webpages into emoji icons for faster 📖:

Suddenly we realized that we could apply the magic of Emoji to webpages. Not only does this pictorial and theatrical language allow us to communicate complex emotions, it’s also far more compact. One Emoji symbol can easily replace dozens of characters, improving efficiency and comprehension on the go. It turns out the best way to communicate in the future is to look to the past: the ancient Egyptians were really onto something with their hieroglyphs.

The 😜 has a bit of an ironic twist, though…
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Twitter has announced a few new features for its Android app today. Users with the latest update to the Twitter for Android app will soon see the ability to select up to four photos at a time to upload when composing a tweet. These photos will be displayed as a collage on the tweet’s detail screen.

Along with the multi-photo support, users are also now able to tag other people in their photos. A new “who’s in these photos?” button allows you to add the username of other people in the picture. Photo tags won’t take up any characters in the body of the tweet, so the full character count will be available for composing a message.

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Photo via the Sunday Times

Last week it was Apple Design VP Jonathan Ive. This week, the Sunday Times is talking to Google’s Tony Fadell (paywall) about his work at Nest, which was acquired by Google earlier this year, the future of his career, and more.

A few choice quotes have been highlighted by Rob Richman. In one, Fadell refutes the idea that money ($3.2 billion to be exact) was the driving force behind the Google buyout, saying that both companies working together can produce much bigger results than they could alone:

This was not a financially driven transaction. When you marry for money, it almost never works. We both believe we have something special and we know what it takes to make it happen around the world.

Regarding privacy and whether Nest would turn over its user data to Google, Fadell said:

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Members of the UK government are seeking to close a tax loophole that currently allows online music, app, and book downloads to avoid the country’s 20% “value added tax” in favor of much lower international tax rates, reports The Guardian. If the push is successful, Google Play customers in the UK will instead be taxed at the appropriate rate for their own country.

However, the new law won’t go into effect until January 1, 2015, so there’s still time for things to change. Supporters of the change say that it will lead to more fair competition among foreign and domestic companies, since UK-based companies are currently at a major disadvantage due to the higher tax rate.

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