SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: August 3, 2012
Welcome to the weekend, everyone! We're about ready to dive into the weekend ourselves, but not before we deliver the evening wrap-up. As with every other day this week, today gave us some more news about Apple's patent trial with Samsung, with Judge Lucy Koh interviewing each and every one of the jurors to make sure they weren't being swayed by any outside influences. Apple's senior VP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller took the stand today to convince the jury that the iPhone's design was unique, while the company's legal counsel did its best to make sure that Samsung didn't share any iPhone sales numbers. Judge Koh also said that Apple wasn't allowed to keep its customer survey results a secret, so Samsung did get a bit of news that could help it out as the trial progresses.
Speaking of Samsung, it seems that the company is gearing up to announce something, but we're not entirely sure what. At first, Samsung said that the Galaxy Note 2 will be getting a reveal at its August 29 press event, but later backtracked on the statement. The company did begin teasing its planned reveal for its August 15 event, however, and that one seems to be Galaxy Note related.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus both received Ice Cream Sandwich today, while the HP TouchPad is now (partially) running Jelly Bean thanks to an unofficial port of CyanogenMod 10. HTC was in the news a bit today, as it warned that in Q3 it will experience an drop in revenue of up to 23%. On the more optimistic side of things, it appears that the HTC One X+ may be heading to T-Mobile soon, so at least there's that.
After hearing that Microsoft was planning to drop the Metro branding for Windows 8 and Windows RT earlier in the day, the company went ahead and officially ditched the branding this afternoon. A pair of Sony cameras were leaked today, and OUYA has announced that it will be partnering with iHeartRadio to bring streaming radio to everyone who buys the Android-based game console.
EA had its fair share of headlines today, announcing The Sims 3 Seasons and filing a lawsuit against Zynga for copyright infringement. Electronic Arts claims that Zynga ripped off The Sims Social with The Ville, and the publisher didn't have any problem accusing Zynga of theft in the complaint it filed. Finally, NASA is gearing up for Monday's Curiosity rover landing, and you can bet that tensions are high as we head into the weekend.
As always, we have a few original articles we encourage you to check out, such as these interviews with Colin Farrell and Bryan Cranston from Total Recall, which is in theaters today. We also take a closer look at the leak of the final build of Windows 8, and wonder why stuff like this surprises anyone anymore. Enjoy the weekend, folks!