Thursday, June 13, 2013

Amazon's bringing its Kindle Fire HD 7, 8.9 to India on June 27th





Having recently rebranded its operations in India under the Amazon name, the retailer announced today that it's launching the Kindle Fire HD 7 and 8.9 there later this month. Due on June 27th, the two tablets will ship for 15,999 ($275) and 21,999 ($380) rupees with access to a reported 1.9 million-plus apps, games and books. The company opened its Kindle store locally last year, accessible via the older Kindle device sold at retailer Croma, as well as Kindle Paperwhites currently listed on the Amazon India store. The Kindle Fire will also be sold through "over one hundred" brick and mortar stores in India, with a list available on the Amazon website. There will also be locally-sourced content available with tablet-optimized apps for Indian video services like Big Flicks, Chhota Bheem and more, plus e-book prices that are promised to be the lowest in the country.

Finnish carrier DNA confirms it will be the first to launch Jolla phones running Sailfish Mobile





Jolla recently revealed its first phone, and now Finland-based carrier DNA has confirmed it will be the first operator in the world to offer the self-titled handset. Running the Sailfish operating system, these devices continue on a path blazed by Meego while also promising Android app compatibility out of the box. The Jolla phone features 4.5-inch "HD" display, dual-core CPU, 16GB storage with microSD expansion slot, LTE and an 8MP rear camera. Our hands-on demo should reveal a bit more about what it's bringing to the table (including an interesting split design that could allow future hardware augmentation), interested local residents can hit the source link to pre-order one now.

Google's latest Chrome Experiment lets you slam a cube at a friend's face (video)





Google has cobbled together yet another fun Chrome Experiment, and this time it's Cube Slam, a Pong-inspired tennis-style game with video chat support built-in. It was developed with WebRTC, an open source project that lets you enable video conferencing in the browser without plug-ins. This way, you can initiate a game with a friend just by sharing a link. The idea here is to propel a cube at your friend three times in a row until the screen collapses. Various power-ups like fireballs, lasers and shields are available along the way and every level presents an increasingly difficult set of obstacles and challenges.

If you're feeling anti-social, you can also play against a computer character called Bob the Bear (seen above). Indeed, as WebRTC is not available on mobile just yet, the Bear will be your only opponent if you want to play the game on your phone or tablet. We were able to play a single-player game on Safari and Firefox, but Chrome is required for multi-player. Offline play is also available by downloading the app from the Chrome Web Store. Head on past the break to watch a demo of the game in action, or just click on the appropriate source to start hurling cubes at Bob.

Samsung bakes, drowns and shocks Galaxy S 4 in stress tests (video) Mobile





Samsung torture-tests pre-release smartphones like many of its rivals, but it's rare in letting us have glimpses of the process. Case in point: its thorough punishment of Galaxy S 4 samples in a new video. Along with drop-testing the phone in multiple ways, the company's lab techs cover the GS4 in dust, dunk it in water, punch it, shock its controls and even bake it. The promo piece unsurprisingly shows the flagship device making the cut every time -- you didn't think Samsung would show any exceptions to the rule, did you? Still, the Korean-language clip (after the break) may be reassuring to those who were worried that a thinner, lighter Galaxy S couldn't hold up to some abuse.