According to a tweet by CNBC, the event will be held in New York City and will be “product-related”, which hints to the possibility that the company simply isn’t planning a shindig at their headquarters, but rather are setting up a venue to announce something fairly big. The company also plans to live stream the event to those not able to be in attendance.

Details are still scarce at this point, and we’re not 100% sure as to what the company has up its sleeve, but we wouldn’t be too surprised if it involved Tumblr in some capacity. It’s rumored that Yahoo wants to acquire Tumblr for around $1 billion in order to cater towards the younger, hip crowd. It would certainly be Yahoo’s biggest buy yet, and the company has been all about acquiring younger startups as of late.

Just recently, the company acquired several smaller firms, including popular to-do list Astrid, but have ended up shutting most of them down and acquiring the employees, suggesting that Yahoo wants to expand and improve on its various services and offerings. Whatever the case may be come Monday, let’s hope that Yahoo has something worthwhile planned to unveil.

VIA: CNET

As far as what we’ll see, Huawei has always been the company to release the first of things, and they’re never afraid of publicly experimenting with different sizes and shapes. That said, we could see Huawei reveal a device with an 8-core processor that could also be the next world’s thinnest phone, dubbed the P6-U06.

Back during CES 2013, the company revealed two new phones that came with some new features that we haven’t seen before. The Ascend D2 came with the densest display at the time, and the Ascend Mate was revealed as the world’s largest smartphone with a gigantic 6.1-inch display (yet it only came with a 720p resolution).

Either way, we’ll be reporting during the event to see what Huawei has up their sleeves. The company has been pretty busy lately, and just announced that their first Windows Phone 8 device, the W1, is heading to the US later this month exclusively at Walmart, where it will release amongst a large crowd of other WP8 devices.

This sale is a record, one way or another. Back in 2012 tickets sold out in right around two hours after they went on sale, that time working with an on-sale time that wasn’t announced in advance. The same situation occurred in 2011 where ticket sales took around 12 hours.

Here in 2013, the release of tickets was pre-announced and pinpointed for Apple developers, this allowing the masses to be on-point with clicks and credit cards. This event should prove to be an important one in Apple’s history as it will reveal not only a new iteration of their desktop operating system, but their mobile operating system as well, both of them with new leadership behind the scenes.

Have a peek at our still short history with WWDC 2013 in the timeline below and prepare for the big set of events starting on June 10th and lasting until the 14th of June, 2013. We’ll be live in-effect from start to finish, especially in regards to the major keynotes which have in the past proven themselves to be significant moments in the Apple road of events.

The invite reads, “The Nokia Lumia story continues,” and to the left it reads, “See what’s next” in big bold letters that are slightly hidden, almost like a stereogram. We’re not sure what that specifically is all about, but we do know from the invite that Nokia will be showing off a new Lumia device at the event.

We’ve heard that the new smartphone will sport an aluminum outer shell complete with a waterproof nano coating from P2i, similar to that of the technology that we saw at CES back in January from the startup company. The phone is said to be codenamed “Catwalk,” although an official moniker for the phones is not yet known, nor are details imminent.

Apparently, the secret phone was at Mobile World Congress back in February, and only a handful of analysts were able to feast their eyes on the new toy, but solid details are yet to be revealed. There’s also the chance that they’ll release the Lumia 928 on Verizon, which we’ve been hearing about for some time now.

[via TechnoBuffalo]

This generation’s console will be going to battle directly with the already announced PlayStation 4 and will be bringing with it Microsoft’s next generation of gaming software. It’s highly likely that the event will contain more than just details about the console itself, bringing with it a collection of developers and game producers from top-name brands and legacy affiliates.

“On that day, we’ll share our vision for Xbox, and give you a real taste of the future. Then, 19-days later at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, we’ll continue the conversation and showcase our full lineup of blockbuster games.

We are thrilled to pull back the curtain and reveal what we’ve been working on.” – Major Nelson

This event will be happening on the 21st of May, less than a month away. This is well ahead of the gaming convention E3, this allowing game developers to ready their wares for the convention while the Microsoft-made machine has its own day in the sun.

have a peek at the brief timeline below of recent tips and suggestions from the SlashGear archive of Xbox 720 articles. As this event takes place at the real-deal Xbox campus, we can expect nothing less than a significant showing by the creators of this machine prepared for the future.

[via Major Nelson]

We’re no strangers to GM’s in-car tech. The company announced earlier this year that it would be equipping all of its models with in-car LTE, and promptly showed off a demo of what you could do when your 4G connection is actually baked into the car’s electronics, rather than just a dumb mobile hotspot in the glovebox. We also played extensively with Cadillac CUE, the infotainment system built into the 2013 ATS, last year.

GM isn’t a late entrant to the infotainment market, however, and gambles like baking expensive LTE radios into every single model aren’t exactly new. “If you look at our history, we’ve long had OnStar as an asset” GM President Mark Reuss told us. “So I think bringing that demonstrates the commitment we’ve made. There were a lot of tough times at the company when we looked at the equipment that we put in to do that, and generally did not price for. So that’s generally a long-term financial commitment to what we think we’re now being able to look at: an amazing opportunity for us for 4G, the expansion of that pipe we’ve invested in.”

In fact, Reuss argues, car connectivity and the functionality that enables could well end up being the 21st century’s equivalent of extreme customization. “If you look at how people use their cars, if you look at the changing demographics, new people coming into the car-buying market, most of those people have sort of an “ultimate customization” available, they see all the different devices available today” he pointed out. “That’s a reflection of who you are, that’s a reflection of how you live … it’s almost like hot-rodding used to be, right, sort of like that type of creativity that you have. It’s very low-cost, it’s very fun.”

Examples of that flexibility GM has already demonstrated range from remotely setting LED color schemes and cabin temperature, monitoring fuel levels and economy from across the country, and turning your car into a Skype video conferencing suite. However, Reuss says, the key is minimizing the stress involved in owning a car.

“That attention and care is now delivered through the pipe of the car, because the car is now bringing that information back to both the dealer, our engineers, and us as an OEM, and that’s really important data to us from a safety standpoint, and it’s important to the customer” Reuss says. “It takes the challenge of thinking about “when’s my oil going to be changed?” and “when are my tires going to be rotated?”; it takes that away from your busy life. And these are big, big things because the world is not getting less complex, and these type of tools in fact can make your daily life less complex.”

Still, it’s a big investment to web-enable every car you produce, especially when only part of your audience might walk into the showroom with an understanding of cutting-edge informatics. According to Reuss, GM has tackled that in how it markets each system across each of its brands, picking out the key functionality it knows potential drivers are going to be most interested in, as well as able to afford.

At the budget end, for instance, there are models like the Chevy Spark, aimed at younger drivers who are particularly smartphone-savvy. “You see widely different approaches in GM in how we’re doing this” Reuss points out. “The reason for purchase in a Spark of the screen we have in the car, the bring-your-own-media, don’t underestimate that. This is a car that’s under $13,000 … so that car in that price point is one approach to connectivity and bring-your-own-media, that replicates basically what you have on your phone in a very simple way, a fun way.”

On the other end of the spectrum is Cadillac’s CUE, which doesn’t assume the driver will necessarily be coming to the car with a pocket or bag full of the latest phones and slates. Instead, Reuss says, “the CUE system embeds more of that technology into the car, into the center stack of the car.”

For Cadillac drivers, the appeal of a system like CUE might not be its streaming media capabilities but how it unlocks new safety and convenience features: tech that builds on the same underlying informatics hooked into the car, but delivers that access and data in differently focused ways. “The price point is wildly different,” Reuss concedes, “but that type of information, integration, safety systems, crash avoidance, automatic cruise-control, radar-detected cruise control: that data and that format in the car you’ll see on the most expensive models in the range. And it replicates a lot of the function of what a tablet, or a smartphone, would do for you on a use-basis.”

The next example of that growing technological focus inside and outside of the car comes in the shape of the new 2014 Cadillac CTS, the company’s latest sports sedan. Set to hit the road later this year, the CTS builds on the excellent example of last year’s Cadillac ATS, borrowing the expansive all-digital driver instrumentation from the more expensive XTS, and cladding it in a sharp suit with echoes of the eye-catching 2014 Corvette Stingray.

On the outside, that design language expresses itself in features like the daytime running lights, extending down from the main lamp cluster and under the bumper. Like on the new Corvette, GM has worked hard to diffuse the LEDs so that they illuminate as two solid strakes of light; that, director of Cadillac exterior design Bob Bonaface tells us, gives the whole family a recognizable face, and one which you can spot no matter whether it’s day or night.

It’s arguably on the inside that the technological and materials focus is most obvious. Just as the Corvette team strove to be “authentic” in their choice of finishes – opting for real carbon-fiber, real metal, real leather rather than cheaper lookalike alternatives – so the new CTS dresses its cabin in premium materials. Eight interior finishes will be offered, ranging from the more traditional black, tan, and brown leather, through to more eye-catching shades like blue, each with optional contrast stitching. Real carbon-fiber and aluminum also show up again, joined by open-pore and natural finish wood.

The center stack has the same zero-profile touch sensitive buttons, topped by an 8-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen with anti-gloss and oleophobic coatings, as we saw in the Cadillac ATS last year. However, the ATS’s LCD sub display in the driver’s binnacle has been replaced with a huge, 12-inch 1280 x 480 cluster display, capable of showing multiple instrument layouts and even 3D graphics of the car which can be scrolled through using wheel-mounted controls. It’s all driven by a tri-core ARM11 processor running Cadillac’s proprietary Linux OS.

The only visible sign of that underlying tech that GM wants drivers to see, though, is a smooth and responsive interface. It’s still a work-in-progress, Reuss tells us, but it’s one the car company is committed to: making its car’s controls just as tactile and efficient as analog would be, while also having the flexibility benefits being digital brings. “Things we’re working on to make them perfect is the feedback and latency of something so simple as a volume control,” he says, “so we’ll work to perfect that, but the use and layout of it is spot-on, so we’re committed to that.”

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating (or, in this case, how many drivers aren’t punching their dashboards in confusion), the GM President says the response – even from those who might traditionally be considered more tech-averse – has been positive. “While the demographic for Cadillac may not be the very youngest car-buying population, our population is currently changed by the use of those devices no matter what your generation is” he argues. “You immediately understand what [CUE] is and how to use it, so we’ve had very little feedback that that’s a problem; very little from the CUE system in both the XTS and ATS.”

Next up is third party developers wading in, as GM throws open its In-Vehicle APIs and invites coders to cook up new functionality and features based on having core access to the infotainment stack. Alongside that, there’s an official plan for “agility and capability” over the next decade, Reuss says, though he also points out that consumer demands more than anything might well shape what car dashboards look like and deliver in tomorrow’s models.

“I don’t know how it’s going to evolve, and that’s exciting to me” Reuss concluded. “It’s sort of an open world of possibilities for it, and our job is to provide those open world of possibilities enabling people’s lives to be easier, to provide new advantages to buy a GM car, and to provide a user-interface that’s extremely safe, and easy to use, and very consistent.”

From the outside it’s clearly a Corvette at first glance, but take a longer look and the evolution of the design becomes clear. The 2014 car is 4mm lower than before, as well as being wider and 15mm longer; the wheelbase has increased by an inch, pushing the front wheels forward and giving the car a better footprint and handling, in addition to making it look more composed and aggressive. New lights front and rear, as well as a new collection of vents, perforate the bodywork, which has a new blend of creases and sweep-lines.

Importantly, the design elements aren’t done solely for the sake of appearance, but also invariably serve a performance element too. “You want a compelling design, you want a strong aesthetic” GM’s Kirk Bennion, Exterior Design Manager for Corvette, told us. “We try to do things where, okay, this gives us a new look that we like, we think it’s attractive, but if we can also benefit with some functionality then it’s a double win. We like to do that with Corvette especially.”

So, the front grill and the hood vents aren’t just for show, but sit at either end of a new, ducted extractor that feeds cool air across the radiator. That itself has taken on a whole new angle: where Corvette radiators of old went from upright to leaning back, Bennion explained, the 2014 model actually tips its radiator forward, into the flow of air. Each of the grill blades in the hood sits at its own, specific angle for the best flow.

That’s not the only trick ducting. The 2014 Stingray sees the return of intakes on top of the rear arches, sitting on the long swathe line that runs from the back of the car, down the shoulder-line, and blends in interesting angles with the hood and arch creases. They’re not for cooling the brakes, but instead are the rear trans and diff coolers, which are just visible through the upright outlet vents at the back of the car. They also saw GM’s engineers take on the challenge of delivering a huge eight cubic meters of air per minute through each intake, while simultaneously avoiding debris. Side vents – finished in carbon-fiber – are also fully-functional, delivering a reduction in drag as well as cooling benefits.

Like many other recent cars, the 2014 Corvette Stingray makes ample use of LED lighting; however, GM has taken a few new approaches in how it implements those lamps. Up front, there’s a new single, bi-functional headlamp with daytime running lights replacing separate fog lamps. That’s something we’ve seen on models from Audi and others, but GM has played with the positioning and angles of the LEDs to make the lighting more consistent.

“We wanted to avoid ‘carnival light’ spacing” Bannion told us, referring to the tendency for LED lamps to look like a string of individual bulbs rather than a solid bar of light. “We really worked hard to keep the LEDs close together, to diffuse the light.” To do that, the LEDs are actually downward-firing, into a diffuser lens that smooths out the individual brightness of each into a consistent whole. They’re set next to a stack of amber LEDs for the turn signals, which also blend together into a solid lozenge of light, and everything is embedded into a black stainless steel assembly which creates interesting reflections depending on the angle from which you’re looking at the car.

That same attention to detail is continued at the rear of the car. GM has stuck with the dual-element tail lamps that have been a feature of Corvettes since 1961, but it has used the same downward-firing LED technology as on the headlamps for some extra visual flourish. “The technology here again is indirect LEDs, so the LEDs are horizontal, they’re throwing the light down into the cavity, for even-lit appearance. They kinda avoid having the spottiness” Bannion explained. “Also, with the lamps being three-dimensional, is very new for the car as well.”

The result is a car that treads the line between classic and contemporary, just as GM expects a Corvette Stingray buyer to demand. “They’re still dual-almond shape, but we really felt we needed to break tradition, have a car that’s more distinctive, more unique at night” Bannion pointed out. “There’s a lot going on with lighting technology right now, and you can see manufacturers are doing more and more to have their cars be seen, or be seen as exclusive with the night-time signature.”

It’s when you’re inside that the changes are most obvious, however, particularly if you’ve ever found yourself behind the wheel of a previous-gen Corvette. The dashboard and seats are less of an afterthought compared to the exterior, Helen Emsley, Interior Design Director for Performance Cars at GM, told us. So, the 2014 dash is more like a jet-fighter cockpit, surrounding the driver in an arc of controls and gages. Those gages have been redesigned for the new Corvette Stingray, with a choice of digital and analog views in the 8-inch instrument binnacle, and variations according to which of the three driving modes – touring, sport, and track – the car is currently set to.

Just as the exterior design has sought to make aesthetic details serve a functional purpose, so part of Emsley’s focus with the new Corvette has been to make the interior more authentic. “This is a Corvette. If it’s metal, if it’s aluminum, it should be real – it is real aluminum. If it’s carbon fiber, it’s real carbon fiber,” she explained to us. “It was very important to us that we show real, authentic materials.”

That approach has continued over to the passenger seat, with Emsley saying that GM wanted to make the 2014 Corvette Stingray just as much of an experience for the person not driving. So, the “co-driver” gets a separate interior, in Emsley’s words, a second cockpit arch with their own speed gage and heating controls. Materials all round have taken a step up in quality, with hard surfaces replaced by soft-finish plastics and contrast-stitched leather. In fact, GM has even cooked up two new, exclusive leather colors for the Corvette: black may well be the most popular, Emsley concedes, but the new beige and new red finishes are expected to draw some buyer attention, along with the existing black & grey and black & dark brown options.

Everywhere you look there are thoughtful design decisions, showing just how much consideration the GM team has put into the interior of the new car. Recognizing that many Corvette buyers want to replace the standard seats with more sports-focused alternatives, Emsley points out, GM will offer a choice of two styles with the 2014 model: either the normal touring seats, or special sports seats as a cost-option. More mundane – but no less important – considerations like storage have been addressed in clever ways, too, like a sizeable storage cubby hidden behind an 8-inch motorized drop-down infotainment display.

The Stingray convertible – which made its North American debut at the New York show – is certainly beautiful, but those who opt for the coupe also get a choice of roofs. Three targa tops are on offer: the standard, carbon-fiber roof which is painted to match the body; a premium version which is left in exposed carbon; and a polycarbonate version which is translucent, allowing more light into the cockpit. There’ll also be various body/performance packages, such as the Z51 with its tall rear spoiler – helping reduce lift – and larger wheels.

All in, it’s a suitably considered approach to what’s undoubtedly a muscle-car icon. “When you think of the opportunity, every time you get to do a new next-generation Corvette, you realize that there has to be certain calculated moves in order for it to be seen as the next-generation, and that’s why we felt we needed to make some of these changes” exterior design chief Bannion told us. Throw in a new LT1 6.2L V8 engine capable of 450 HP and 450 kb-ft of torque, and you’ve got performance that matches the great looks, too. The new 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray will go on sale this fall, in both coupe and convertible versions.

Wave Works: Real-time Ocean Simulation action with TITAN

Beginning this show with TITAN – the GeForce GTX GPU we’re about to have hands-on time with in the very near future here on SlashGear – some interactive ocean experimentation was shown. Straight away we saw a ship shown on a large screen, real-time water being pushed up against the craft as heavy waves came up and crashed against it. With 20,000 sensors in-place (virtually), this demonstration showed how with NVIDIA GPU power, we’ll be able to test the ability of ships in the future to withstand a beat-down.

If we didn’t know better, we’d have to guess that this demonstration of the ship was real – this demonstration was called Wave Works, and was a Beaufort-Scale Real-Time Ocean rendering. Absolutely gorgeous.

UPDATE: (above video) fast forward till about 8 minutes in to see the action begin – real-time ocean simulation action!

Face Works

Also included was a show of what the company calls Kepler Dawn. This lovely fairy was the work of many, many years of work on the creation of a very real human form. Attempting to escape the so-called “Uncanny Valley”, Huang let us know that they were close, but weren’t quite there yet with this first show. The “Uncanny Valley” is a place where realistic animations get creepy – incase you didn’t know – this happening between an obviously animated creature and a real human being.

A new technology called Face Works was introduced, letting a system that before NVIDIA got to it was 32GB to be pushed into 400 MB. Here we’ve seen NVIDIA’s Titan GPU turning an animated face look real. For those of you that aren’t able to see this face move in real-time yet, hear this: it’s impossibly realistic. If Star Wars is going to feature Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hammil, they’ll use Face Works to make it work.

UPDATE – here we go, have your mind blown right this minute!

Stick out the full conference with us here on SlashGear as we cover the entirety of the show, front to back. Have a look at our GTC 2013 tag portal for more information and stay tuned for more amazing rendering beastliness!

From start to finish, this presentation by Samsung is at once a now-classic “Unpacked” presentation of company wares and an utterly fanciful mishmash of dance moves and singing. WIth the Samsung GALAXY S 4 the company has presented a set of four everyday life enhancing pillars that we’ve also outlined for you in four distinct articles. Peruse those beasts in the timeline below while you hear the New York-style wildness here and now.

The Samsung GALAXY S 4 has taken the company to a place where they’ve decided to rely on a winning hardware design while moving forward with software features galore. If you’re familiar with the Samsung Galaxy S III, you know that the nature-inspired hardware has been appearing in Galaxy devices across the board ever since the smartphone launched last year. In the success of that device and subsequent Note devices, Samsung has stayed strong with brand-specific software connections such as Group Share and S-Beam, not to mention ChatON and note-taking apps galore.

That little weird kid was there too – don’t forget him! After you’ve seen the video, have a peek at the timeline below for all the information and hands-on action you could possibly handle from the Samsung GALAXY S 4 – and get pumped up for the full review coming on sooner than later!

This device has a total of 1080 pixels by 1920 pixels across its 5-inch display, this showing a lovely 441 PPI, one of the highest pixel densities in a smartphone on the market today. Depending on the market this device is released in, it’ll be working with one of two processors. One of these processor possibilities is the Samsung Exynos “Octa” SoC clocked at 1.6GHz per core – there’ll also be a Samsung GALAXY S 4 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon quad-core processor clocked at 1.9GHz.

The front-facing camera on this device is 2 megapixels strong while the back-facing camera clocks in at 13 megapixels. Both of these cameras work with a collection of features that are outlined in a set of four user experience pillars that Samsung has set up for this device. In the Enjoyment pillar you’ll find the camera outlined in full.

The Samsung GALAXY S 4 works with a body that’s 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm small and just 130g in weight – again, smaller than the GALAXY S III in thinness and lightness. Samsung says it’s stronger than the Galaxy S III as well. Inside you’ll find a 2,600 mAh battery and one of three different internal storage sizes: 16, 32, or 64GB of space. This device also has a microSD card slot that’s able to work with a 64GB card.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see everything – this timeline will expand as our details posts and hands-on experiences are revealed. Stick around all night long to see more!

From the outset, it’s clear that Samsung hasn’t strayed too far from the formula that made the Galaxy S III so successful. The new phone follows in the family style footsteps, though while the dimensions are similar to before – the same 136.6mm length, slightly wider at 69.8mm, and slightly thinner at 7.9mm – Samsung has managed to squeeze in a larger display. The new Super AMOLED HD screen measures in at 5-inches, versus the 4.7- of the older phone, and now runs at a crisp 1080p resolution for 441ppi pixel density.

Even just accommodating a screen of that size without a significant change in size is impressive, but the panel itself is a good one too. It’s still PenTile, which is likely to make some display purists groan, but it keeps the great contrast and rich colors we’re familiar with from AMOLED. We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that the similarly 1080p (though slightly smaller) HTC One’s LCD3 screen is a little more natural and pleasing to our eyes, though.

If HTC has focused its software efforts on BlinkFeed and Zoe, Samsung has cast its net wide, basically throwing everything at the wall in the expectation that at least something will stick for most users. The 13-megapixel main camera (paired with a 2-megapixel front camera) gets a new suite of features, such as the ability to take two photos or videos simultaneously from the front and rear cameras and combine them into one, Samsung Dual Shot, and being able to append up to nine seconds of audio to a still, to give it some context when you later review it. Samsung calls that Sound-in-Shot, though while it’s clever, we’re not quite as impressed as we were by HTC Zoe.

There’s also no shortage of signs that Samsung has its eye on what’s currently fashionable in mobile. So, there’s Cinema Photo, which basically creates a cinemagram-style animated photo without demanding a third-party app, and Drama Shot, which builds a single frame out of multiple burst-photography stills. You can easily share a group of images about, say, a recent holiday in a Story Album, complete with facts from Trip Advisor; that can later be printed courtesy of a tie-in with Blurb.

The Galaxy S III introduced eye-recognition for keeping its display active, and the GALAXY S 4 builds on that with Smart Pause and Smart Scroll. When you look away from the screen during video playback, the phone automatically pauses it until you look back; similarly, if you’re looking at the S 4 and reading a longer list, then simply tilting the phone scrolls through it. The GALAXY S 4 is pretty obsessed by where your fingers are, too: the Galaxy Note II, for instance, could track whether its S Pen nib was hovering over the screen but not touching, but now the S 4 can do the same only recognizing your fingertips.

That means you can peep inside folders and galleries, or at the content of unopened messages, simply by floating your fingertips over the top of them; Samsung has also brought in some third-party app support, with titles like Flipboard also supporting the Hover feature to preview new stories. It’s not the only way the GALAXY S 4 is watching you. Air Browse, Air Jump, and Air Call Accept all track hand movements, allowing you to wave and gesture your way through menus, answering calls – which we could see being particularly usefully when you’re driving – and controlling music playback.

When you can pretty much count on your phone selling in the millions, you can start to look at how different units interact, as Samsung has with the GALAXY S 4. There’s Group Play for audio, video, and gaming playback, creating ad-hoc local networks of multiple handsets all running the same content synchronized, for instance, with support for games like Asphalt 7 and Gun Bros 2 working with the feature. There’s also S Translator in the latest version of ChatON, the messaging app, and the email app, usefully switching between languages rather than forcing you to copy and paste into something like Google Translate.

Samsung has really gone to town on added-extras – in fact the number of times you might have to dig into Google Play for a third-party solution is shrinking all the time. There’s a business card scanner – which also usefully gets S Translator baked-in, to pick out and convert foreign addresses and job titles – and an IR blaster which, with the new Samsung WatchON app, turns the phone into a remote control complete with EPG and on-demand access.

The rest of the hardware basically backs up that software flourish with the power the Galaxy S4 needs to deliver on its promises. Different geographies will get different processors, depending on the combination of LTE and other factors, with Samsung choosing between the quadcore Snapdragon 1.9Ghz and its own eight-core 1.6Ghz Exynos 5. . No matter the chip, there’ll be 2GB of memory to accompany it, and the usual 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of internal capacity. Samsung has also stuck with expandable memory and a removable battery, something neither the HTC One nor the iPhone 5 offer, features which remain popular among power-users and business customers.

Image and sound processing also get worked over, with Samsung Adapt Sound and Adapt Display. We’ve seen such DSP used to good effect by Sony and others, and the Galaxy S4 benefits too, though when it comes to sound it’s clear that nothing can replace big drivers. The HTC One’s custom speaker system and Beats Audio processing still has the edge, to our ears.

Samsung didn’t stint on accessories for the Galaxy S III – at a time when, while iPhone had a thriving ecosystem of third-party add-ons, Android devices still lacked anything so cohesive – and the company hasn’t slowed down with the Galaxy S4. There’s a new S View Cover, like a flip-cover only with a window cut through that allows a small part of the smartphone’s display to remain powered-up and show battery, signal status, music playlists, and incoming call details. That’s courtesy of AMOLED’s capability to only power a small subset of an overall display, and sip battery while it does so.

Then there are the new add-ons to go with S Health. Samsung did have some health & fitness tech for the previous Galaxy, but the S4 steps it up a notch, timely given the focus on wearables and monitoring right now. Software-only, S Health will work as a pedometer as well as tracking temperature and humidity, in addition to allowing users to log their food (with a huge database in the background of nutritional information). However, there’s also Samsung S Band, a Bluetooth-enabled tracker in the manner of a Jawbone UP, which logs data even if the GALAXY S 4 isn’t nearby, and then synchronizes with it once they’re back in range. Samsung also has a Bluetooth-enabled body scale and heart-rate monitor, which also feed their recordings into the phone.

Expectations for the GALAXY S 4 have been high, but Samsung has taken the evolutionary rather than revolutionary path for its new phone. Then again, it didn’t have to: sales of the Galaxy S III remain brisk, and the company has the marketing budget to hammer home its latest message. It also avoids frustrating existing owners too greatly: they’ll be getting software updates which add many of the new Samsung-exclusive additions, and haven’t been left too far behind with the hardware.

That said, should Galaxy S III users upgrade to the GALAXY S 4? If you insist on being on the very latest hardware, and you’re wedded to Samsung, then perhaps it’s a no-brainer. However, it’s not the vast step-up we saw from, say, the Galaxy S II to its successor. In fact, while the hardware is cutting-edge, it’s clear that Samsung’s efforts this time around have really been focused on software enhancements. Some won’t care about things like the IR blaster or Group Play, but will lap up the S Health system and Air Gestures, or vice-versa, but either way there’s a sense that there’s something for everybody.

On the one hand, that’s liberating – after all, why should everyone use the same device in the same way? – but on the other it can get overwhelming and confusing. The appeal of the HTC One is not only that it’s built so well (leagues ahead, we must say, than the in-hand-feel of the GALAXY S 4) but that it focuses on doing a couple of things particularly well, in ways that make a significant difference to the user over and above the standard Android OS.

We’ll confess to a certain sense of unease, then, about how the GALAXY S 4 will find its place in the smartphone market today. Samsung has done what it needed to – in the manner of Apple and the transition between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S – to bring its flagship up to speed. Promotion and advertising will take care of the rest. If that overshadows phones like the HTC One, however, devices which really do take a more revolutionary approach, then we’d be mightily disappointed.

The Samsung GALAXY S 4 will sell by the bucket-load. Everybody knows that. But in a way we’re still more thankful for its predecessor and how that forced every other Android OEM to raise its game for 2013. That’s better for consumers, and more interesting for us. We’ll have to wait until we can review the Galaxy S4 before we can tell whether it’s actually the best Android device of the lot, however.

What you’ll see below is a collection of tips and suggestions for what could be the device we’re going to see in the next couple of hours. If predictions are right, this device will take on a look that’s not all that different from the Samsung Galaxy S III, complete with the nature-themed aesthetics and Android-packing software finesse. This smartphone is set to become the new leader for the manufacturer as well.

The Samsung Galaxy S III lead the pack for Samsung last year with the introduction of the hardware theme that’s run strong through the Samsung Galaxy Note device ecosystem ever since. This collection of moves includes a lovely set of smooth angles and colors from white to blue, black, and sometimes red or brown. While the future may hold non-Android software for Samsung – the distant future- we can be sure that we’ll be sticking with Google’s own mobile OS this week as well.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see recent chatter from the technology and gadget universe surrounding the Galaxy S4 and what it could contain. Meanwhile have a peek at the main news feed here on SlashGear for more information as it appears throughout the night – we’re ready to rock and roll!

Another oddity in our biggest hits of the week was an early tip we received from an intrepid early-entrant to the convention. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 was photographed on a large screen standing proud at the massive Samsung booth that was opened early the next day. Even though Samsung really only “revealed” one new piece of hardware at the show, that single piece of hardware – and subsequent posts about that device’s power – ended up being more popular than many of our other hands-on and up-to-the-minute news posts.

From Brand New to Brand Reinforcement

While this year’s convention in Barcelona was larger than past years – at a new, larger venue with more floor space than ever – it ended up being commented on as more “dry” than shows in past years. That’s a rather subjecting thing to say, of course, but take note of massive releases at Mobile World Congress in the past, and you’ll see the trend. Instead of revealing brand new never-before-seen lines of devices and unique services at the convention, companies now appear to be showing more “here’s another from our already successful line” items – or no new hardware or software at all.

2010: The HTC Desire, Samsung Wave S8500 (with Bada!), Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, Toshiba TG02 and K01, Acer Liquid e, and a whole lot more. [MWC 2010 tag portal]

2011: NVIDIA shows their Tegra roadmap and the superhero-themed code-names for processors we’re still seeing revealed today. Samsung reveals the Galaxy S II and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. LG shows the LG Optimus Pad (aka G-Slate) and the LG Optimus 3D. HTC shows a collection of smartphones and a tablet, as well as the Facebook phones Salsa and ChaCha. Google shows up with Eric Schmidt to speak at a main keynote while the Google Pod exploded unto the collective minds of attendees. [MWC 2011 tag portal]

2012: HTC revealed their HTC One series with the HTC One X, S, and V. ASUS shows a full line of Android-powered beastly tablets. The LG Optimus Vu, Sony XPERIA P, and game-changing Nokia Lumia 808 with 41-megapixel camera were all revealed – see more Nokia action in our 2012 MWC Nokia wrap-up specifically. Samsung seems to have started the trend of revealing their hero devices outside of MWC here with just two reveals at the event, one of them being the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Qualcomm brought the Snapdragon S4 dual-core SoC, Texas Instruments showed the OMAP 5, and oddly, Microsoft showed up to bring on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Google again brought Eric Schmidt and another Google Pod. [MWC 2012 tag portal]

This year we saw ASUS show a new version of a concept they’ve released before in the ASUS PadFone Infinity and a re-skinned but perfectly recognizable 7-inch tablet called the FonePad – look like the Nexus 7 to you? (Incase you did not know, they made that too, revealing it in an early iteration back at CES 2012 at the NVIDIA keynote then re-revealing it at Google I/O 2012 as the Nexus 7.)

We also saw Nokia reveal two new smartphones that apply what they’ve learned with the Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices they’ve had on the market for several months to two new sizes: Lumia 720 and Lumia 520. Groups like HTC and Motorola decided against revealing anything new at all, with the HTC One having been revealed one week earlier than the conference and the Motorola RAZR lineup being the center of a rather low-traffic Motorola presence.

The folks at HP decided to take a swipe at creating a real-deal Android tablet (quite likely because of the odd success the HP TouchPad had after it was essentially given away post-WebOS cut) – have a peek at the HP Slate 7 and see the Beats grab hold again.

ZTE revealed a new rather large smartphone in the Grand Memo, here showing for the first time the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC – but the actual hardware won’t be in stores until the third quarter of this year. LG brought on a relatively impressive selection of devices including the LG Optimus G Pro – but that device was revealed well before the conference started as well. The only things LG actually revealed during the conference were items like the “world’s smallest wireless charger” and a bit of some (admittedly rather impressive) HD wireless transmission technology.

If you’ll have a look at each of the several hands-on posts we’ve got from LG, you’ll see that they’ve really only confirmed that they’re sticking with the design language they wrote with the still-popular LG Optimus G. These devices are going to be winners, but as far as LG revealing their biggest beasts of the year at MWC – that simply didn’t happen. A “true” replacement for the LG Optimus G will come later this year in an LG-run event separate from a press conference, we estimate – you can count on it. The most interested news this week touching LG was, without a doubt, their purchase of WebOS from HP – the repercussions of this have not yet begun to ripple!

Where are the heroes?

So you’ve got Google who, for the past two years, had set up a playland of Android bits and pieces throughout the convention, deciding here to continue to command like a sigil guardian. There was no official Google stand, but they were there – and they did hold one heck of a yearly party. You’ll see more of the Google Head Space action in our LG Optimus G Pro Photo Tour of MWC 2013 – complete with Tinie Tempah, Florence and the Machine, and one massive amount of bright lights and dancing Androids – and a Google Play lounge as well.

Samsung remained a magnificently massive force on the floor, even with but one new device – again, an expansion of a line they’ve been building for a while now. Samsung continued to drop massive amounts of cash on advertising around the city during the week (and beyond, we’re sure), and had what very well may have been the largest hands-on-centric booth at the convention. There’s some contention amongst analysts (and would-be analysts) who cannot decide whether Samsung has “abandoned” the show by only revealing one device or are supporting it more than ever with such a hearty floor presence – with devices, to be fair, not everyone there had seen before.

HTC had for the past several years used Mobile World Congress as their big blast-off point for the whole year. This year they – perhaps rather wisely – decided to have a launch a week before the Spain-based show. This way they were able to capture several days of press on technology news sites for themselves AND offer hands-on looks at the device – the HTC One – to convention-goers too.

The NVIDIA crew did indeed bring some fire to the show with hands-on looks at both a Tegra 4-toting developer tablet and the Phoenix Developer Platform smartphone, made specifically for Tegra 4i. I don’t know if I can drive this point home enough times, but here it goes again: while the Phoenix device was new, the main subject remained the Tegra 4i (and the Tegra 4), with NVIDIA letting the news about everything they had at MWC 2013 – more or less – out well before the convention started so as to keep more press time to themselves – more than they’d get on convention week.

Qualcomm also had a rather large presence on the floor with their vast array of demonstrations of both devices running their hardware and showings of what’s possible in the near future with services such as AllJoyn. Qualcomm’s biggest push this past week was, indeed, for AllJoyn and the “Internet of Everything” as it appears that we’re getting really, really close to the beginning of that connectivity hitting the market. As AllJoyn gets closer to real announcements of hardware manufacturer and developers being on-board, the AllJoyn Alliance begins its switch from just OeM/Developer outreach to public outreach so users know what it’s all about. See our features with both the President of the Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. Rob Chandhok and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs as well as our Qualcomm tag portal for the full story.

But again, most announcements made were not for a brand new product or service, but for expansions of services and the strengthening of bonds – with the occasional smartphone or tablet reveal mixed in.

It’s the function of the convention that’s changing

While we’ve heard more than just a few people suggesting that this is the year the tech convention dies, I’d like to suggest a different possibility. The function of the tech convention is morphing. It’s the collection of reasons that hardware companies, software companies, developers, and the press head to these conventions and present themselves that’s changing.

In the past – for a while – a company would come to a large convention such as Mobile World Congress to reveal their newest products. Very recently, it’s become clear to many large companies that they’re able to get more attention – and prolonged attention – if they host their own separate event for each product they launch during the year.

The method of creating separate non-convention events held by manufacturers of hardware (and sometimes software) will soon be the unquestionably dominant expected way of things. They’ll also be the “reveal” point for any truly important product. For the press that’s able to travel to each of these events during the year, the larger conventions will grow less and less important to attend.

For everyone else, conventions like Mobile World Congress will continue to represent an opportunity to get hands-on time with products they might otherwise have to wait to see in stores – and they’ll continue to be great for networking person-to-person as well.

Evolution

For someone like you, the reader, this all means that you’ll get your hands-on looks at brand new devices spread out further throughout the year as opposed to having them all bunched up at CES, CTIA, MWC, and the like. And that’s fine with us!

Spread the announcement love more evenly across the year and we expect we’ll have a more tasty experience. Maintaining interest in the consumer technology universe through releases spread out over the year means a healthier – and less predictable – industry as a whole.

Or so we hope!

Have a peek at our [Mobile World Congress 2013 tag portal] to see everything we saw this year at the convention, and stay tuned to SlashGear for more. We’re expecting big releases from companies like Samsung, Motorola, and Google relatively soon – and that they’ll be breaking out the release love more frequently than restricting themselves to conventions such as these would otherwise allow. Excitement on the horizon!

The last time Facebook held an event actually wasn’t too long ago. About a month and a half ago, Facebook showed off their new Graph Search feature that’s currently rolling out to users as we speak. Now, the company is back for more, and it looks like they’re going to be giving their front page a little bit of a face lift.

However, as for what to expect with a News Feed redesign, we’re not really sure. It could be something that integrates better with Graph Search, but Facebook hasn’t been focusing too much on its News Feed, so it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. The company has mostly been focusing its efforts on Timeline profile pages recently.

Of course, just yesterday Facebook announces that it would be acquiring Microsoft’s Atlas ad server in order to give marketers and advertisers better tools for managing and tracking their ads on Facebook. We doubt that next week’s event will have anything to do with Atlas, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Zuckerberg brought it up on stage. Stay tuned!

Canon is implemented true mediated reality with its headset, using stereoscopic cameras on the front of the HM-A1 HMD to take a view of the real world and then overlaying computer graphics, which are then fed to the twin displays inside. They run at 1280 x 960 resolution, higher than many cheaper HMDs we’ve seen, and use a specially created free-form prism display system that Canon claims means less distortion and fewer optical aberrations around the periphery.

Capturing and displaying graphics is only part of the overall system, however. The MREAL setup also requires tracking data, to know where the user is looking and what they’re interacting with, and of course a software platform that hooks into whatever 3D environment you’re exploring. On the sensor side, there’s a combination of visual markers and an optional gyroscopic sensor, the latter of which tracks the orientation of the headset in space per frame of video.

It’s the markers, though, that are more commonly relied upon. MREAL can work with optical and magnetic sensors, including third-party brands, but the most obvious are a series of QR-like glyphs which can be used to mark the sides of a physical mock-up. By tracking those glyphs, MREAL can map the movement of the virtual object against the user’s manipulation of its physical counterpart.

So, a basic model of a car, or a camera, or the control surface in the plane could be marked out with a few MREAL glyphs, and then Canon’s system will overlay whatever proposed controls or components are intended. The wearer can interact with those controls as if they were real, able to “look around” the environment with the physical perfectly matched to the digital representation.

On the software side, Canon’s MR Platform has been designed to hook into the most common CAD and 3D visualization packages, with an MR Platform SDK to make integrating existing graphic design software with MREAL straightforward. RTT, the makers of 3D visualization software RTT DeltaGen, has already confirmed it will be combining the package with MREAL; existing customers include Audi, BMW, GM, Ferrari, and Porsche, as well as Adidas and Electrolux.

It’s not just prototyping and industrial design that Canon sees as benefiting from MREAL, however. Another avenue the company is pushing is museum use, where visitors would be able to don an HM-A1 headset and have characters – whether famous faces from history, dinosaurs, wild animals, or fantasy constructions – appear in the real-world with them, interacting as if themselves real. Another possibility is retail, where designers of custom furniture, architects, and others could use MREAL to walk their customers through the design refinement process, tailoring the final product to them without costly iterative prototyping along the way.

Compared to the wearable displays we’ve seen on Google’s Glass and from others, Canon’s is obviously a league ahead. The blending of the digital graphics and what’s actually going on around you is surprisingly good, with the mapping of the two very accurate. You can see your hands – if the system decides they’re relevant to the environment – and after a little acclimatization, it really is like you’re handling a more complex object or coming face to face with a dinosaur.

Interactive Demo Gallery

We tried several demos with the MREAL system, tailored to different potential clients. In an educational-style environment, we were able to interact with a virtual dinosaur, walk around it and pet it, while still seeing other people in the vicinity not wearing a Canon HMD. In another setup, we were able to virtually “kick the tires” of a digital car, customizing colors and trim, exploring the dashboard, and generally seeing what we could expect to be driving despite the real-world object being far more basic in its design. A virtual earth-mover allowed us to experience the cabin and identify ergonomic flaws, such as controls that blocked access to the cup holder, and which might normally demand a physical prototype be built before the issue was identified. There’s more details in our hands-on videos.

Hands-on Demo Gallery

As Canon and its partners see it, the big difference between something like Glass and its MREAL system is the introduction of haptics. “We’re already overloading the eyes as it is” Simiosys’ Christopher Stapleton explained to us. “The question is what’s going through what channel, and how. So, this whole aspect of multitasking isn’t about the number of tasks, it’s about competition for attention.”

“You have all the senses, in all dimensions and all directions, all this impact, we’re overloading the eyes in proportion to the hearing, or the touch. The eyes have depth-perception to a certain extent, but the only interactive sense we have is touch, so the aspect of mixed-reality and haptics is a huge jump in how much we can do. What [Google] is doing is too much in one area.”

Meanwhile, the traditional idea of a GUI – whether text or icons – is quickly becoming overwhelmed by the complexity of what today’s systems can deliver. Instead, Stapleton argues, systems like MREAL can take what would be a very complex interface and make it more naturalistic. Today’s users aren’t looking for ever-increasing menus and toolbars, he says, but gesture response, social interaction, and a more human way of encountering the digital world.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all this doesn’t come cheap. Canon will be selling the entire MREAL Mixed Reality System – the HM-A1 headset and the MR Platform software – for $125,000 from March 1, with a $25,000 annual maintenance fee on top. That might sound expensive, but Canon balances it against the existing costs companies face of producing a hardware prototype. That process – which can be relatively quickly and affordably mocked-up virtually using MREAL – is an even more expensive one, and it’s easy to see how MREAL could earn its keep over time.

Canon MREAL Mixed Reality Presentation Gallery

Of course, there’s no way to be 100% positive until Google gives us some official word, but our friends at Android Community point out that this new device is called the “ASUS ME370TG.” The original Nexus 7 was the “ASUS ME370T,” so it isn’t exactly difficult to connect the dots in this particular instance. What’s unknown at this point, however, is whether or not this 3G Nexus 7 will also be the 32GB model we’ve been hearing so much about.

At the moment, we’re going to go ahead and assume that it is, but it’s also possible that Google will reveal separate Wi-Fi-only and 3G Nexus 7s with 32GB of storage. In any case, it seems pretty clear now that Google will be announcing some kind of new Nexus 7 model during its event, so it’s officially time to get excited. After all, a new Nexus 7 model isn’t the only thing Google is rumored to have up its sleeve.

Rumors also say that it will be revealing the LG Nexus 4, along with the Samsung Nexus 10. It appears that there will be plenty of Nexus to go around, so now all we need to do is play the waiting game until October 29 arrives. Monday is just four short days away – are you ready for whatever Google has planned?

That’s not a bad price, and copies of Windows 8 will be available as a download, in stores, and online, Sinofaky says. With the three different preview builds of Windows 8, Sinofaky says that the new OS has gone through a whopping 1.24 billion hours of testing, which should mean that Windows 8 is as bug-free as possible when it launches in just over 12 hours. Of course, as we covered in our review of Windows 8, there are a number of reasons to upgrade, including better performance over Windows 7.

Sinofaky touched on that during his presentation too, claiming that Windows 8 offers better battery life, faster boot times, and a “smaller memory footprint.” The big bonus is that most Windows 7 programs are compatible with Windows 8, which means that you spend less time looking for updates after your install of the new OS is complete. We’ll undoubtedly be hearing more about Windows 8, Surface, and Windows RT during this event, so keep it tuned to SlashGear and be sure to check out our Microsoft Portal for any news you might have missed!

This week New York is also home to the premiere of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system, with hardware manufacturers and software titans bringing their own fire throughout the week. The biggest Microsoft showing is set for Thursday as well, it containing both a live-televised press event and a major Times Square send off the likes of which the world has never seen – it’s the most screens taken over by a single company, after all.

We’ll be at the Microsoft Windows 8 press event tomorrow morning too, mind you. It’s a full week with more lovely mobile and near-mobile action than the computing universe can handle.

At Microsoft’s approach, Samsung about to be out-done. With the Galaxy Note II already up in international reviews as well as national reviews, the push this week acts more as a waving of a flag than it does an opening of door. Kanye West is here to knock the door down and wave the flag like a maniac, one way or another.

We’ll be at this stop on the Galaxy Note II World Tour 2012 throughout the night. We’ll let you know how it goes. Stay tuned, and check the timeline below for more Galaxy Note II hands-on action!

However, Microsoft won’t be streaming the whole event – just the keynote, which means that the stream will be live for just about an hour tomorrow morning on Microsoft’s website. That’s where we come in – we’ll be at the event all day long checking out Windows 8, Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet, and hardware from Microsoft’s partners, so after the cameras shut down, be sure to keep it at SlashGear for more information for the show.

Microsoft has some pretty big weeks ahead of it. This launch event comes one day before Windows 8 will become available to the general public on October 26. It’s that day that Microsoft will be launching Surface RT across the country as well, and the company is even opening a number of temporary stores in cities around the US to sell the tablet and its new operating system.

Then, we have Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 launch event next week on October 29, which comes the day before Microsoft BUILD 2012 kicks off. It’s a great time to be a Microsoft fan, and we’re excited to see all that Microsoft has to offer in the coming days and weeks. To find out more about Microsoft’s incoming products before the event kicks off tomorrow, be sure to have a look at our Windows 8 and Surface RT reviews!

Apple has also made it easier to insert mathematical expressions into textbooks, whether those are graphs or equations or charts. Expanding on that, publishers can also put multi-touch widgets into their books, putting even more information at users’ fingertips. While all of this is cool, there’s one new feature that outshines the rest: iBooks Author publishers can now directly edit their books, so they can make changes on the fly and update information as needed. The rest of the features will definitely come in handy, but we’re thinking that the ability to edit books will prove to be invaluable.

This new version of iBooks Author is available today, and you can nab it for free. We’re sure that publishers are going to go crazy over this new edition of iBooks Author, so Apple may find itself with a lot of praise after this release. Keep it tuned here to SlashGear for more, and be sure to have a look at our Apple hub to make sure you didn’t miss any news from today’s event!

One of the biggest announcements of Cook’s presentation, however, is that the App Store has hit 35 billion downloads. Compare that to Google Play’s recent 25 billion downloads milestone, and it sounds like we’ve got a heated competition on our hands. Even better? Apple has paid out $6.5 billion to developers since the launch of the App Store, which definitely isn’t anything to stick your nose up at.

Of course, that $6.5 billion figure means that Apple is making a decent chunk of change on the side. These are some pretty big achievements for the iOS App Store, and you can bet that Apple will want to continue attracting new developers to iOS. Also something that’s certain: there are at least a few developers who are making a lot of money on the App Store. Stay tuned for more information straight from Apple’s event, and be sure to check our Apple hub for any news you may have missed!

These refreshes have also been tipped to be coming with some upgrades, of course, including a Mac mini with 16GB of RAM included in two RAM slots and a denser machine overall. That’s not to say much for the weight of the machine, but the insides will certainly be jumping at leaps and bounds while the size of the unit stays relatively similar to past models. This update has the Mac mini finally able to join the official Apple ranks – rather than just 3rd party modified sales ranks – with its 8GB configuration replaced with 16GB of RAM for the standard edition.

The Mac mini may well have 32GB of RAM then with higher grade models, with four slots for RAM still being the situation on the innards. This boost has separately been tipped to be coming in at a thinner profile than before, strangely enough, this ringing true with the theme of the event, Apple showing us “a little bit more” as it were.

The iMac on the other hand will be keeping its height but reducing its thickness, with a bit of a teardrop design making this all-in-one sort of machine small as it is gigantic. The iMac has been tipped as having a price increase as well, so we’ll see whose reports add up in the end. Size reductions add to the possibility of there being a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro as well.

We’ll be live at the Apple event on the 23rd of this month – that’s next week – so stay tuned and make sure you’re ready for lots and lots of action. New hardware primarily is what we’re expecting, but we could very well see some software boosts as well – we shall see!

This event will play host to Windows Phone 8 and many of its integrated launch-day services including Xbox Music for battle with Spotify and iTunes. We may see the elusive Verizon Nokia Lumia 822 (aka the Atlas. We’ll definitely going to see more of that “fundamental shift” that Steve Ballmer was talking about. We’ll definitely get a Windows Phone 8 pre-order date if we don’t have it by then.

We’ll hopefully just be seeing a few HTC devices including the Windows Phone 8X and the 8X as well. The 8X will be one to watch, for sure.

The folks at ZTE MIGHT have a Windows Phone 8 device at the event – though that’s unlikely. The devices we’ll certainly be seeing are the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Lumia 820, both of them ready for action right the heck after the event, we should hope. We’ll be there with bells on, you can bet -stick around!

That, ladies and gentlemen, would be the Nexus 4, which has been at the center of a lot of rumors lately. This new Nexus phone is said to be made by LG, and there have been plenty of rumors that claim the Nexus 4 will be very similar to the Optimus G. It looks like we’ll be finding out if there’s any truth to the various rumors come October 29.

The Nexus 4 may not be the only thing Google has up its sleeve. At this press event, it’s possible that Google will also reveal the new 32GB Nexus 7, which is probably one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry at the moment. We’ve seen the 32GB Nexus 7 popping up all over the place lately, and this latest model appears primed to replace the 16GB variant. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for a reveal during the event, but at this point, an announcement almost seems like a no-brainer.

Of course, there’s no way to be sure of what will go down at this event until we’re in our seats, but whatever Google announces during this press event, we know it’s going to be big. We’ll be there reporting from the event, so you’ll be able to find out all you need to know right here at SlashGear. Who’s ready to see some new Nexus devices?

The invite contains a note about a Microsoft Surface Reception specifically and makes Windows 8 the main subject of the event. This invitation, it’s worth noting, uses Microsoft’s new identity with the simplified Microsoft logo and flattened Windows logo for the forward-thinking future. Colors abound, this invite is also set to take place in colorful New York City. You can bet that SlashGear will be there with bells on.

This event starts at 10AM EST with contents that aren’t yet entirely clear – with an event that has an end-time, there’s always surprises in store. For now we’re going to assume that Windows 8 will be shown off, perhaps alongside Windows Phone 8 devices working together, and that Microsoft Surface will be prepared for prime-time action. Microsoft is also prone to bring on giant displays, fancy arrangements, and loud music across the planet and back – we’re expecting no less than a circus for Windows 8.

Have a peek at the Windows 8 timeline we’ve prepared below to get yourself pumped up for the full action we’ll face on October 25th. You can tune in all day long to keep yourself ready for next-level operating system release joy and Microsoft jumping up and down for no less than their greatest excitement to date. Be there or be square!

According to the folks at UnwiredView, the text on the invitation (pictured below) says something along the lines of “Something small will be really big,” and, “Get ready for a little sensation.” Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure what Samsung is talking about in this invitation, but we can clearly see the “S” that Samsung has always used in the branding for Galaxy S devices pictured in the center. So, at the very least, we should be hearing about a new Galaxy S device at this event on October 11.

The text on the invite, however, suggest that this device’s size is one of the main talking points. That’s leading some to believe that the long-rumored Galaxy S III Mini will be revealed at this event, but even though the evidence is pointing toward such a reveal, we’re hesitant to say that it’s a sure thing. In short, take any rumors about a Galaxy S III Mini with a grain of salt until Samsung makes the announcement it’s teasing in this invite.

Even with all of the mystery, it would make sense for Samsung to release a Galaxy S III Mini. The Galaxy S III is a great phone, but some think that the massive 4.8-inch screen is a little on the big side. If Samsung can fix those complaints by offering a mini variant of the Galaxy S III, it would surely net a few more sales, so we’re tempted to believe the hype and assume that the company is teasing the Galaxy S III Mini here. What do you think?

[via Android Community]

This device has an on/off sleep/wake button on top, a 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack at the bottom near two speaker grills and a Lightning connector. It’s got three microphones for HD recording, and two buttons on the left, one for turning the volume up and one for turning it down. Of course, the iPhone 5 also comes running iOS 6, which boasts a number of improvement and new features, including Apple’s new Maps app, Facebook and Passbook integration, and new Siri functionality (which includes support for additional languages). NOTE: Check out our full hands-on with the iPhone 5 soon in our Apple portal!

That A6 chip lends to “twice the CPU and graphics performance,” and that 8-megapixel iSight camera on the back comes with a sapphire crystal lens that not only provides “a crystal clear” image, but is also more durable than standard glass. The iPhone 5 takes advantage of Apple-developed single-radio LTE, and also has dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi support at its disposal. Even though the iPhone 5 comes with a brand new Lightning connector, users will be able to connect to legacy 30-pin devices through the use of a special adapter, so Apple has you covered there. On the front we also have a “FaceTime HD” 1.2-megapixel camera, capable of shooting in 720p.

So there you have it, the iPhone 5 is actually a thing and it’s already taken up residence on the Apple’s homepage. It’ll go up for pre-order later this week on September 14, and then Apple is set to begin its worldwide roll out of the new phone on September 21. Like iPhones in the past, this one comes in three different flavors: 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $399 (with a two-year agreement of course). Tell us – are you picking up the iPhone 5 next week?

To top things off, the iPod Touch comes with the same sapphire lens cover that the iPhone 5 is equipped with. The camera on the back support 1080p with image stabilization, while the FaceTime camera on the front can shoot in 720p and makes use of Apple’s facial recognition. The new iPod Touch will come in a variety of different colors – aluminum, black, red, blue, and yellow – and each one will come with a color-coordinated wrist straps that you can attach to the back of your device to keep it secure while using it as a camera.

Finally, in one of the most important announcements during Apple’s presentation, Siri is coming to the iPod Touch. The addition of Siri is bound to move some units this holiday season, so we’re going to go ahead and say that putting Siri on the iPod Touch is a winning idea for Apple. Have a look at our liveblog of Apple’s event for as-it-happens coverage, and also be sure to stop by our Apple portal to find more in-depth posts on Apple’s big announcements.

On September 28, a week after those locations listed above, the iPhone 5 will launch in 22 other countries, including places like Austria, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Denmark, Spain, and the Netherlands. Sometime in October, the iPhone 5 will release in 20 more countries, with Apple saying this is its “fastest phone roll out ever.”

By the end of the year, the iPhone 5 will be available in 100 different countries on 240 different carriers. Apple’s goals for the iPhone 5 roll out are definitely lofty, and it better hope that it goes into this worldwide launch with enough devices to satisfy demand – after what we’ve seen today, it’s basically a sure thing that the iPhone 5 will be selling like crazy once it launches. Be sure to check out our liveblog of Apple’s event for up to the minute news, and keep watching our Apple portal for more in-depth coverage. There’s more to come, so stay tuned!

Apple has equipped the iPhone 5 with three mics to aid in noise cancellation. This will come in handy for both voice calls and video, and they will also help in a big way with voice recognition. To complement the multiple mic setup, Apple has made a few improvements to the speakers and earpieces, bringing the size of both down by a significant 20%. As an added bonus, Apple has also announced that Wideband audio will now work with more frequencies.

So, with the iPhone 5, we can expect audio quality to be a bit better than we’re used to with other smartphones. This is on top of other improvements already announced by Apple, including the iPhone 5′s lightweight and thin design, a 4-inch screen, and the addition of Retina Display. Be sure to have a look at our liveblog of Apple’s event for details as they’re revealed, and also stop by our Apple portal, where we’re posting all the news you need to know from today’s event!

The iPhone 5 is pretty light too, weighing in at only 112 grams – that’s 20% lighter than the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 5 is the same width as the iPhone 4S is, but it’s a good amount taller. That change was made to accommodate the new screen, which measures in at 4-inches. That’s a pretty significant upgrade, considering that iPhone screens of the past have come in at 3.5-inches.

Of course, the iPhone 5 also features Retina Display, which will undoubtedly be a big selling point for the brand new device. All in all, Apple promises a new iPhone that feels great in your hand, and with those specifications, we don’t doubt that it will. Be sure to hit up our liveblog of Apple’s event for second-by-second updates, and check out our Apple portal for more in-depth coverage of the event!

Preparations still seem to be ongoing, but the images show that they’re certainly underway and progressing nicely. We can see workers decorating the outside of the building with colorful banners, as Apple is wont to do for its press events and major reveals. On the inside, we can plainly see a wall that has been plastered with a huge Apple logo. There isn’t any doubt about it – Apple has something huge planned, and thanks to a number of leaks (and Apple’s own invitations) we have a pretty good idea of what that is.

Apple is widely expected to announce the iPhone 5 next week, and indeed, all signs point to such a reveal. There were also some rumors that claimed Apple would reveal a brand new iteration of the iPad – the iPad Mini – but lately those rumors have died down in favor of new whispers which claim that the iPad Mini will be revealed at a later date. Earlier today, we caught word of an incoming iPod reveal at the event, but aside from the iPhone 5, it’s still difficult to say what Apple has planned.

In any case, it’s going to be pretty big. We’re going to be there liveblogging the whole thing, so be sure to follow this link and watch everything unfold starting at 10 AM PST on September 12. Additionally, to tide yourself over until the big event actually arrives, be sure to check out our Apple portal for all of the latest rumors, speculation, and news. Stay tuned folks, because the next few days are likely to be quite the wild ride.

We suspected as much, mostly because it’s clear that Amazon wants this new tablet to offer some stiff competition to the Nexus 7. If you want the larger, 8.9-inch variant of the Kindle Fire HD (again with 16GB of storage), that’ll cost you $299. Those prices aren’t too bad for either tablet, and we’re sure that Amazon will have no problem netting significant sales from Kindle Fire veterans and newcomers alike. Additionally, the Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE 8.9-inch with 32GB of storage will be available for $499. Amazon’s also got a solid 4G plan ready to go as well – 250MB of data a month, 200GB of cloud storage, and $10 Amazon credit for $50 a year.

The 7-inch Kindle Fire HD will be available on September 14 – just over a week away. If you’re interested in either of the 8.9-inch versions, you’ll have to wait a little bit longer, as those aren’t launching until November 20. This means that all three will be arriving in time for the holiday shopping season, so expect them to be big hits at the tail end of 2012, especially the 7-inch version. All three are available for pre-order today, so have at it folks.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also took some time to talk about the success of Kindle Direct Publishing, which allows authors to self-publish their books on the Kindle Store and receive 70% of the profits. That sounds a lot better than having to deal with publishers who are less willing to take chances these days, and indeed authors seem to have realized that too. The program has been a success, plainly speaking, with 27 of the top 100 Kindle books being published through KDP.

With these new devices, Amazon is obviously interested in expanding Kindle’s services for authors and those who are looking for more aside from just novels. We’re likely to see both Kindle Singles and Kindle Direct Publishing expand at a faster rate now that Amazon has a brand new line up of Kindles to offer consumers, so we’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for that. Keep it right here at SlashGear for more information from Amazon’s Kindle event!

That “Paperwhite” display lends to a number of improvements in the eReader field. Amazon says that the Kindle Paperwhite offers 25% more contrast, whiter whites and blacker blacks. The high-resolution screen provides 212 PPI and 62% more pixels, a significant improvement over Kindles from the past. Even better? Amazon says that the Kindle Paperwhite boasts a 8 week battery life, even with the light turned on the entire time. Any way you slice it, that’s pretty impressive.

Like most eReaders, the Kindle Paperwhite is pretty lightweight and easily portable. The entire unit sports a thickness of 9.1mm and a weight of just 7.5 ounces. It’s no surprise that Amazon has announced a new Kindle with a backlight – doing so lines it up to be a direct competitor with Barnes and Noble’s Nook Simple Touch with Glow Light – but these additional features and that sexy display might just make it the eReader to have this holiday season. Stay tuned for more news direct from Amazon’s Kindle press event!

Yes, you heard that right – The Verge reports that Amazon has a smartphone of its own in the works, and it might announce the device during tomorrow’s press event. The Verge’s sources “confirmed” that such a smartphone exists, and said that it will come running a modified version of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Apparently, it will support Nokia Maps instead of Google Maps, which seems to jibe with Nokia’s announcement earlier today that it will soon be adding a major Nokia Maps partner. Very interesting indeed.

There aren’t too many other details at the moment, as these sources say that the phone is incomplete. Why would Amazon want to announce the phone tomorrow then? Nokia and Motorola both announced a new round of phones today, HTC has an event coming up later on in the month, and the iPhone 5 looks set for reveal on September 12. If Amazon was planning to announce a smartphone of its own, it would probably want to keep up with its competitors, which might be why we’ll get an announcement tomorrow.

If Amazon is truly planning to enter the smartphone business, this is pretty big news. With the current rumors telling us that Amazon may be planning a new, beefed up Kindle Fire that can challenge the likes of the Nexus 7, it becomes easier to believe that the company is also plotting a smartphone reveal. Stay tuned, because we’ll have the information you need tomorrow, straight from Amazon’s press event.

[via Android Community]

That wasn’t the only major announcement from today’s Nokia event, however, as the company also announced the Lumia 820. The Lumia 820 is a Windows Phone 8 handset for the budget-minded consumer, but aside from a few downgrades in some places, the Lumia 820 comes packed with the same hardware that the 920 does. Those interested in the Lumia 820 should be sure to check out our hands-on with the device to get a better feel for how it is.

With the release of the Lumia 920, Nokia is rebooting PureView, and showed off some pretty impressive results. We don’t have a solid release date for either handset yet, but both will be arriving in a variety of colors before the year ends – that’s with LTE and HSPA+ functionality too. The Nokia Lumia 920 will also be packing a glove-friendly touch screen when it arrives, and Nokia also announced a range of accessories for the device as well.

Some of those accessories include the JBL Power Up speakers and the Fatboy charging pillow – which allows for wireless charging of your handset. We went hands-on with some of those accessories, so have a look at it to see if they might be some extras you’d be interested in buying. The Lumia line will be getting AOL’s entertainment hub through AT&T, and the company also announced today that over 7 million Lumias have been sold to date. Will the Lumia 920 and 820 boost that number? You can bet that Nokia is hoping so, and from what we saw, the company just might have a pair of winners on its hands. Stay tuned.

First you’ll want to check out the details of the event itself – it’s taking place on September 5th at 9:30AM EST in New York and we’ll be covering it right from the real-world location for your benefit! Stay tuned to SlashGear during the event to get up close and personal with the next generation of Nokia devices working with Windows Phone 8, code-named Apollo. Nokia has provided one single detail on this device lineup outside the fact that they’ll be working with Windows Phone 8: the name. According to Nokia, Samsung should be “taking note”, because their “next generation Lumia” will be coming soon – September 5th soon, that is.

There’s been word that Verizon will be amongst the carriers that’ll be working with Windows Phone this season – with Nokia in mind. After the Apple vs Samsung case in the USA had its first verdict, Nokia stock went up, this looking bright for the next generation of Microsoft-embedded Lumia lineup. The details are surprisingly abundant on this line of devices even though they’ve not been revealed as such by the manufacturer.

Have a peek at the Nokia Lumia wireless charging pad that appeared this morning and make sure you don’t mistake it for a mouse. That same post shows some wireless earbuds and a wireless charger for the earbuds as well – or it could be a holder for some Nokia thin minds too – we don’t know yet! This tip also includes a note that Nokia’s wireless charging will be working with the Qi system so you wont need to use the Nokia puck if you don’t want to.

There’s been a tip on a Nokia Lumia 920 PureView, complete with PureView technology inside. This PureView isn’t the same 41 megapixel camera beast we saw earlier this year in the Nokia 808 Pureview, but an 8 megapixel cousin that we’ve yet to hear any details on.

Another device that’s been leaked is the Nokia Lumia 820 Arrow, this device being a mid-range device with much of the same lovely software enhancement suite that comes with Windows Phone 8 on the Lumia lineup. Here you’ll likely be seeing a much more affordable version of the hero devices also coming up this week. Like the rest of the line, this phone appears to have a flat front screen.

There’s also been a Nokia Lumia 820 appearing with Windows Phone 8 aboard. This device appeared right alongside the 920 PureView in a single underground news blast, both of them working with Windows Phone 8, but the 820 having slightly less powerful specifications. The 920 will likely be sold with its camera being the main point of interest while the 820 will be appearing as the hero line of standard Windows Phone 8 smartphone – it’ll also have slightly rounder edges and will be appearing in purple, blue, gray, black, white, yellow, and red.

The final release date for Windows Phone 8 is currently looking quite likely for October 29th, 2012. Because of this, each of the Windows Phone 8 smartphones that have been shown off so far – and will be shown off this week – will probably be showing up on carriers late in October as well.

As a bit of a bonus, it seems, Nokia has also shown off – and officially, this time, mind you – a couple of audio hardware lines of products. FIrst take a peek at the Nokia / JBL NFC speakers announced last week during IFA. Then have a look at the Nokia Purity Pro Wireless headphones that are made – just as the NFC cans are – to match the color pallet of the Lumia line perfectly. These headphones are manufactured by Monster and will also be connecting to your devices using NFC.

Remember to tune in on September 5th at 9:30AM EST right here on SlashGear to see what Nokia actually brings to the table with Microsoft at their side. It’s time for more color, that’s for sure!

We don’t know too much about either of these new Kindle Fires at the moment, but CNET’s source claims that the lower-end model will come with a reworked user interface. Its price is still unknown, but the person – who has supposedly seen both of these new tablets – says that it will sport a price that’s lower than the original Kindle Fire’s $199 tag. If that’s true, then Amazon should have no problem getting these to fly off the shelves, regardless of the fact that it will only offer a slight improvement over last year’s model.

This unnamed person gives us a better idea of what to expect in the higher-end model, but still doesn’t delve into specifics. This particular Kindle Fire will come with a faster processor working under the hood, along with a camera, more memory, physical volume controls and an HDMI port. This one seems poised to become one of the Nexus 7‘s main challengers, but without knowing any pricing information, it’s difficult to make that call.

Still, this new rumor suggests that Amazon is more than happy to stay in the 7-inch market, and now it has some solid competition to go up against. If this is all true and Amazon slaps a sexy price on these new Kindle Fires, then it shouldn’t have any issue competing and raking in the cash. Keep it here to SlashGear, because we’ll reporting straight from Amazon’s press conference on September 6 with everything you need to know.

This slight slap at Apple is likely going to be the closest we’re going to get to an official comment by Samsung outside the courtroom. Samsung certainly doesn’t want to focus on the fact that Apple is currently in the middle of attempting to ban a collection of Samsung devices in the USA, nor do they want the conference to be thinking about the 1.05 billion USD they’re currently legally bound to pay Apple in light of the legal war they’ve just “completed” in the states.

Samsung on the other hand is more than ready to have IFA 2012 attendees as well as the rest of the world have a peek at their new line of products popping up this week. Have a peek at our Samsung tag link as well as our IFA 2012 portal to make the most of this strange time for the manufacturer. Also be sure to hit up our IFA Hands-on portal to see all kinds of hands-on action as it occurs!