Phonebloks: a phone that can be built like Lego

A smartphone with detachable parts that could last forever has been designed.

Phonebloks is a sustainable device that can be built like Lego and would allow users to replace its parts over time instead of buying new smartphones.

Dutch designer Dave Hakkens designed it after his favourite camera broke and he was advised to buy a new one as it was cheaper than replacing the broken part.

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The futility of Surface and ccc RT: If only Microsoft had stuck with Intel

Over the past week, I’ve had the fortune to play with both Microsoft’s Surface 2 and the Asus T100 Transformer Book. These are very similar devices — convertible laptops with detachable keyboards — except for one big and fundamentally life-altering difference: Where the Surface 2 is powered by Nvidia’s ARM-based Tegra 4 SoC, the Transformer Book has Intel’s x86 Bay Trail under the hood. As a result, while the Surface 2 runs Windows RT, the T100 runs full Windows 8.1. Yes, every program and game that you use on your Windows desktop PC also works on the T100. Steam works on the T100. Team Fortress 2 works on the T100. Photoshop works (surprisingly well!) on the T100. Let that sink in for a moment, and then read on.
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Why curved smartphone screens massively increase image quality, daylight readability

Believe it or not, the curved screen on the Samsung Galaxy Round smartphone isn’t just a marketing gimmick: The curvature actually causes a series of optical effects that result in improved contrast, color accuracy, readability, and overall image quality — especially under ambient light that usually makes smartphone screens almost unreadable, such as daylight or fluorescent office lighting.

This new information about curved displays comes from Raymond Soneira, who is one of the few authorities on display technology, image quality, and color calibration. From thestory on his site, it sounds like Samsung gave him a Galaxy Note 3, the Galaxy Round (which is the Note 3 but with a curved display), and a standalone, free-standing OLED display from the Round (which he could bend and flex to his heart’s content). While he hasn’t yet produced his usual slew of images and graphs, it’s clear that he’s very surprised by the massive gain in image quality afforded by the curved display.

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Motorola and Google unveil upgradeable modular smartphone platform

Remember that technologicallyutopian future with modular, upgradeable smartphones that I envisioned back in August? It turns out that Motorola has had the same idea. Called Project Ara, Motorola’s R&D department is working on an “open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones,” with the aim of doing for hardware what Android has done for software. If an open, modular smartphone ecosystem can be realized, it could do wonders for innovation, massively drive down development timelines and total cost of ownership, and finally allow you to do whatever you want with your smartphone, rather than being constrained by draconian measures imposed by carriers and device makers.
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iPad Air reviewed: Thinner, lighter, faster, and easier to hold. What’s not to like?

With just a couple of days until the iPad Air’s official release date of November 1, the first batch of iPad Air hands-on reviews have arrived. As the thinner, lighter, and faster successor to the massively acclaimed iPad 4, the reviews for the iPad Air are exactly what you’d expect: universally positive.
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iPad Air: Escaping Apple’s Reality Distortion Field

At first glance, with the Apple Reality Distortion Field at full power, the iPad Air seems like an impeccable, immaculate device that could only ever be conceived by the magicians at Apple in California. The iPad Air is some 30% lighter and 20% thinner than the iPad that it replaces, while still retaining the same Retina display and 10 hours of battery life. Somehow, just somehow, Apple made us feel that it had yet again pulled off the impossible. In reality, the iPad Air, while very attractive, isn’t remarkable at all. The new Kindle Fire HDX, for example, has a higher-resolution screen, more battery life, weighs less, and even costs less than the iPad Air.
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Don’t Despair Over The Ugly iPhone 5c Case Any Longer

The color enticed you. The playful plastic called out to you. And that cover, with silly little circular cutouts had your name all over it.
Thirty dollars later, you’re feeling a little silly after realizing that this case is Apple’s first big design flaw since the Apple TV remote. But don’t be embarrassed, we all make mistakes.
Luckily, a new app called CaseCollage is here to save the day for those of us who thoughtlessly purchased Apple’s case alongside a new iPhone 5c.
The app, launched out of a company called LunarLincoln, lets you pull in images from your social feeds like Facebook, Instagram, Flickr and Picasa to fill in the holes with something a bit less ugly and a bit more personal.
You can arrange the photos however you’d like, or add in preset images or text from a collection provided within the app. Hell, if you love the color scheme but hate that pesky text peeking out of the holes, you can simply choose to get color(s) to fill in your Crocs case holes.
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LG’s New Nexus Phone Gets Detailed In Leaked Service Manual

There has been no shortage of leaks that claim to show off Google’s next Nexus smartphone (including this not-so-subtle nod from Google itself) over the past weeks and months, but we may have just hit the mother lode this weekend. The folks at Android Police have gotten their hands on a hefty, near-final draft of a 281-page service manual for the forthcoming device, which still technically bears the LG D821 model number.
Really though, LG isn’t fooling anyone here. The document is chock full of diagrams and images (some of the device in various states of disassembly) that depict a very familiar-looking phone sporting some Nexus 7-like branding on its rear end. An earlier FCC filing already revealed some of the juicy details — the inclusion of a 4.95-inch 1080p IPS screen and a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 with 2GB of RAM — but this newly leaked manual manages to shine a little extra light (not to mention extra credibility) on those earlier reports.
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iPhone 5c Review: Apple’s Colorful Take On The iPhone Is A Refreshing Change Of Design Pace

Apple’s iPhone release schedule has been predictable in the past when it comes to number of devices: each year, a single new smartphone. For 2013, that’s changed with the iPhone 5c, as for the first time Apple has eschewed simply bumping down the outgoing iPhone as a lower cost option, and has instead released hardware specifically designed to be more affordable. The iPhone 5c is the result of this rare change in Apple’s game plan, and it makes a good argument for being flexible with product lines.
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