Marketing Strategies

That purported 4-inch “iPhone 6c”  floating around the web  yesterday? It’s fake, according to sources who have used the upcoming iPhone with a 4-inch display. Instead of releasing a smaller version of the iPhone 6s in order to appease potential customers seeking an iPhone with a screen smaller than 4.7 or 5.5-inches, Apple is upgrading the existing iPhone 5s that was first released in fall 2013. Also contrary to rumors, the device is not a preview of the iPhone 7 as it will mostly retain the 5s’s design and still include a headphone jack… The new device is internally codenamed “N69,” but the launch name will likely be the “iPhone 5se.” The “se” suffix has been described in two ways by Apple employees: as a “special edition” variation of the vintage 4-inch iPhone screen size and as an “enhanced” version of the iPhone 5s. Indeed, the upcoming “5se” features a design similar to 2013’s flagship but upgraded internals, software, and hardware features that blend the old ...

If you are part of the Overwatch Closed Beta and you’re wondering when the game will be coming back online , you won’t have to wait much longer. In a post on Blizzard’s website, they have announced  that the game’s closed beta will be returning in February. The beta was expected to return in January but it has since been delayed. However its delay was not without good reason. According to Blizzard, this is because they will be introducing a new mode to the game which is based on the feedback that gamers have provided during the course of the beta, although unfortunately it seems that Blizzard did not reveal the details of the new mode, at least not yet. The game’s director Jeff Kaplan writes, “After looking through all of the feedback from last year, one of the things we noticed players consistently mentioning was their desire for more game modes in Overwatch, in addition to Point Capture and Payload. Without getting into specifics, we are working on a new game mode. And we...

Google today announced that it’s bringing a deep learning course to massively open online course (MOOC) provider Udacity. Deep learning is an increasingly popular type of artificial intelligence. Generally speaking, it involves training artificial neural networks on lots of data — like pictures — and then getting them to make inferences about new data based on what they know. Vincent Vanhoucke, a Google principal scientist and a technical lead on the Google Brain team, is teaching  the course , which is part of Udacity’s machine learning engineer Nanodegree program. The Google Brain team advances the company’s core deep learning technology, which can be used inside of many Google products. In November,  Google open-sourced TensorFlow , a powerful piece of deep learning software from the Google Brain team. And sure enough, the Udacity course will cover TensorFlow, as well as convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, and long short term memory networks,...

When  OnePlus  launched its second smartphone last year, it opted to do so without the Cyanogen-based operating system found on its first smartphone, the  OnePlus One . Instead, it had been developing its own UI called OxygenOS which ended up being the out-of-the-box operating system for both the  OnePlus 2  and  OnePlus X . Today, the manufacturer has announced that it has  finished building  a custom version of OxygenOS for the original OnePlus smartphone, and it’s available to download now… While OxygenOS 2.1.4 for the OPO shares many of the same features  found in the OnePlus 2 , there are a few deviations due to hardware compatibility issues. For instance, MaxxAudio’s sound technology and related apps were removed, and both the manual camera and RAW file format options were taken away too. Obviously, there’s no fingerprint support and there’s no screen temperature slider to alter the white tones of the display either. I...

Japan Display has said it will begin mass producing OLED displays within the next two years,  according to Reuters . The move by Japan Display, a joint venture between Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi, is largely seen as an attempt to compete with Asian rivals Samsung and LG amid rumors that future Apple iPhones may use OLED displays. The news isn't super surprising: last month  reports began to surface  that Japan Display may start making OLED displays, although some have speculated that an OLED iPhone wouldn't ship until 2018. The iPhone has been made with an LCD display since its launch in 2007. OLED, or organic light emitting diode, displays are lighter and thinner than LCD displays, and can offer more vibrant colors and greater contrast. Some smartphones, including Samsung's flagship phones, already use a kind of OLED display (which Samsung calls Super AMOLED). The manufacturing processes around OLED displays are generally more expensive than those around...

BlackBerry may be slowly falling into a pit of despair as its market share shrivels, but it appears there’s one place where it’s still beloved: Hollywood. We’ll pause while you scratch your head. Ready? According to BlackBerry , its devices were featured at least 199 times “on each of the ‘big four’ American TV networks, multiple cable channels and both Netflix’s and Amazon’s original programs” during 2015. We will not remark upon the fact that there is apparently someone whose job it is to watch and count. No, we will not. Of course, there appears to be no clear data on how that compares to, say, iPhones or Android-based devices. And the post doesn’t mention whether these uses involved any promotional deals (in which companies pay to have their products featured). Still, what in the name of Hollywood is going on here? Reading through BlackBerry’s own triumphant analysis of its spotlight moments, there seem to be two main reasons their phones are still featured...

Court records reveal details of two companies' relationship Disclosure shows how Apple benefits from Google's ad business Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Google Inc. is paying Apple Inc. a hefty fee to keep its search bar on the iPhone. Apple received $1 billion from its rival in 2014, according to a transcript of court proceedings from Oracle Corp.’s copyright lawsuit against Google. The search engine giant has an agreement with Apple that gives the iPhone maker a percentage of the revenue Google generates through the Apple device, an attorney for Oracle said at a Jan. 14 hearing in federal court. Rumors about how much Google pays Apple to be on the iPhone have circulated for years, but the companies have never publicly disclosed it. Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Apple, and Google spokesman Aaron Stein both declined to comment on the information disclosed in court. The revenue-sharing agreement reveals the lengths Google must go...

Garmin  has rolled out a new smartwatch aimed at people who spend a lot of time on the water. The new smartwatch is called the quatix 3 and it is a marine focused watch that has cruising, fishing, and sailing capabilities. The watch has sunlight-readable high-resolution color display and comes loaded with features that are specifically marine in nature. The watch does support smart notifications to make it useful on land as well. Quatix 3 has full navigational and marine tools and is a wearable instrument that streams NMEA 2000 boat data to give users access to sensor information. The information that the watch offers includes speed, depth, temperature, wind data, and more. The watch also allows boaters to stop and start recording or take still images with the Garmin VIRB action camera. It will also control the Fusion stereo system. The watch has the ability to set MOB waypoints and to navigate back to that point. It also has a 3-axis compass, barometer, and an altimete...

Australian VPN company first to report that Netflix has started blocking its IP addresses Netflix,  right on schedule , has started blocking some subscribers who are using VPNs. Last week, on January 14, Netflix said that it would  begin cracking down  on customers who use VPNs, proxies, or other "unblocking" services to view content that shouldn't be available in their country. The move is almost certainly to appease copyright holders and broadcasters. Way back in 2014,  Sony Pictures accused Netflix of "semi-sanctioning" piracy  by allowing "illegal subscribers" to view geoblocked content. The first report of Netflix blocking a VPN comes from  uFlix , an Australian VPN service that charges AUD$2 (£1) per month for the ability to view Netflix content from around the globe: Some users are starting to have issues with Netflix blocking non-Australian content when going through uFlix. Though it is only affecting a few users at th...