A new app update for the excellent Sonos system brings with it the ability to play iTunes music direct from an iPhone, iPod or iPad.
This chops out the annoying PC/Mac middleman that Sonos users have been tied to since time immemorial.
It also means that if you buy songs on your i-prefixed device, you can listen to them straight away via Sonos instead of having to mess about syncing it back to your computer first.
Spotless
You can also add these tracks to a playlist and mix-and-match with other Sonos-friendly music sources like Spotify.
Still absent though is the ability to play audio from anywhere outside Sonos – so any music streamed via a website or YouTube videos are still shackled to your phone speakers.
Compatible with iPhones, iPads and iPod touches running iOS 6, the updated app is available in the App Store now – sadly there's no word yet on when the Android version will get the equivalent functionality.
Back in October, reports of a new phablet in development at Chinese manufacturer Huawei made the internet rounds.
The phone/tablet was rumored to be Huawei's Ascend Mate, a 6.1-inch phablet with a full 1080p HD screen, 1.8GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM.
On Wednesday, those reports gained a bit more credibility when Huawei's Senior Vice President Yu Chengdong revealed the company's plans to release a large-scale phablet next year.
Bigger, better, thinner
Chengdong announced the news on Weibo (the Chinese version of Twitter), where he described the in-development device as more powerful and thinner than its closest competitor, the Galaxy Note II.
Though Chengdong doesn't officially call the device the Ascend Mate, there are enough similarities between the device he describes and the one revealed in those October reports to make the connection.
Ironically, Chengdong's Weibo account revealed he was sent the news blast from a Galaxy Note II, which he claimed to be using as research to make Huawei's phablet even better.
Though there's still not a firm release date or price lined up for the Huawei Asend Mate, Chengdong did relate the phablet would be cheaper than the Galaxy Note II when it does arrive.
There's a decent chance Huawei will make a stand with the Ascend Mate - plus the Ascend W1 and W3 handsets - at CES 2013 in January.
TechRadar asked Huawei for more info and will update this story when and if the company responds.
Qualcomm, likely now standing as the third-largest semiconductor producer in the world, is expanding on its line of Snapdragon S4 processors with two quad-core CPUs optimized for China.
The MSM8226 and MSM8626 specs deliver a 3G system-on-a-chip with an Adreno 305 GPU, 1080p capture and playback, and support for a 13-megapixel camera.
"The expansion of our Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 family extends our leadership in performance and low power for the high-volume smartphones," Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm vice president and co-president of mobile and computing products, said in a statement.
The chip imports are further helping Qualcomm position itself to be a major global player in the coming years. It was recently announced that the company dropped millions into Sharp to help it develop IGZO displays.
Snapdragon S4 for China
Qualcomm is having a record-breaking year thanks to its smartphone-powering Snapdragon processors, with revenues up 28 percent in its financial year 2012.
Optimizing its line of processors for China should only increase the San Diego, Calif.-headquartered company's revenue spike.
"This expanded roadmap provides our customers with a differentiated feature set upon which to build compelling smartphones for budget-conscious consumers," Amon said.
MSM8226, MSM8626 chip specs
The MSM8226 and MSM8626 processors were created using a 28nm technology node and support multi-SIM capabilities.
Also on board is the important WTR2605 multi-mode radio transceiver, which addresses China-specific requirements for support of TD-SCDMA, CDMA 1xAdv and HSPA+.
The new WTR2605 transceiver comes with an integrated, high-performance GPS core with GLONASS and Beidou support.
This transceiver is supposed to offer a 40 percent power savings and a 60 percent smaller footprint compared to previous generations, according to the company.
Qualcomm says that it will have MSM8226 and MSM8626 samples by the second quarter of 2013 for all customers interested in UMTS, CDMA and TD-SCDMA.
Though these chips are intended for a foreign market, we can only assume the Qualcomm has some mighty fine processors planned for 2013.
Microsoft has issued an update to the popular Xbox 360 SmartGlass second screen app to accommodate the iPhone 5.
The free app allows users to navigate around an Xbox 360 with swiping and tapping gestures, browse the internet through their TV, zoom in on pages and use the iPhone's keyboard to search for media content.
SmartGlass also provides rich supplementary and interactive features for games, movies and music, while you're viewing the content on your television set.
Now, following last week's update for 7-inch Android tablets like the Google Nexus 7, today's revamp gives iPhone 5 owners the benefit of the full widescreen experience.
Bye-bye, black bars
The SmartGlass app, released earlier this year for iOS, Android and, of course, Windows Phone platforms, also allows users to personalise their Xbox LIVE Avatar and compare achievements with friends.
The new update also features a few minor bug fixes, but nothing in the way of new features.
App developers have been gradually updating their wares to accommodate the iPhone's new 16:9 aspect ratio.
Google has been particularly prompt with the process, while other top apps still have the annoying black bars at the bottom and top of each screen.
Google's ex-CEO Eric Schmidt has described the political situation between Apple and Google as being less like a gun-fight and more like a political balancing act.
Describing relations between the two tech behemoths, Schmidt understated the situation by saying, "It's always been on and off.
"Obviously we would have preferred them to use our maps. They threw YouTube off the home screen. I'm not quite sure why they did that."
We might have an idea, Schmidtster – something to do with Apple wanting to own and control everything ever, perhaps.
Sparring
He went on to describe the two companies as being in a cold war, of sorts.
He said, "The press would like to write the sort of teenage model of competition, which is 'I have a gun, you have a gun, who shoots first?'
"The adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they've actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They're not sending bombs at each other."
"I think both Tim and Larry, the sort of successors to Steve and me if you will, have an understanding of this state model. When they and their teams meet, they have just a long list of things to talk about."
We're sure. Other Schmidt-bits include his view of Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook as the big four tech contenders, and identification of the losers in the patent wars as the potential future Androids and Googles.
Patent warfare
Although the patent fights between Apple and various Android-friendly device makers have hit headlines consistently over the past year, Schmidt says that none of the big companies are really losing out.
"Google is doing fine. Apple is doing fine. Let me tell you the loser here," he warned.
"There's a young Andy Rubin trying to form a new version of Danger [the smartphone company Mr. Rubin co-founded before Android]. How is he or she going to be able to get the patent coverage necessary to offer version one of their product? That's the real consequence of this."
Apple may have finished dazzling us with new products this year, but a new leak from a French website may provide a glimpse into what the company may be up to in 2013.
CNET reported Wednesday that images of a purported next-generation iPhone have surfaced on French website Nowhereelse.fr, revealing an exterior virtually identical to the current iPhone 5.
The leaked handset has already been referred to as the "iPhone 5S," in keeping with Apple's naming convention for updates to the outward appearance of its iconic device.
Minor tweaks
Thus far, Apple has used the "S" appendix twice: First with the iPhone 3GS in 2009, then again two years later with the iPhone 4S, each modest updates from their respective iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 predecessors.
In keeping with its bi-annual tradition, the presumed iPhone 5S prototype reveals slightly different placement for internal screws, but otherwise minor tweaks from the current version.
The casing of the handset also appears identical to the iPhone 5, with specific information branded on the back has been replaced with an X, which could indicate the leak comes from a prototype under development.
Google's showing no signs of slowing its pace of Android development, with Android 4.0 appearing on the Galaxy Nexus late in 2011, followed in July of 2012 by the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean release that arrived powering the super Nexus 7.
But, forward-looking, update-obsessed people that we are, we can't help but imagine how Google's going to maintain the pace of innovation in its next version of its mobile OS, which, if it follows the patterns of previous years, ought to arrive on a new Nexus-brand mobile at the end of 2012.
All we know thus far is that Google's working away on the K release of Android, which it's developing under the dessert-related codename of Key Lime Pie. Regarding the version number, it's likely that the Key Lime Pie moniker will be given to Android 5.0. We thought we might find out on 29 October but as yet there is no official word from Google.
Rumours of a new Nexus handset started trickling in during the third quarter of 2012, as we reported on 1 October 2012. There was speculation that this phone would be sporting Key Lime Pie, but sources who spoke to AndroidAndMe correctly claimed that the handset, which turned out to be the Google Nexus 4 would be running Android Jelly Bean.
So now as we wait on official news of the Android 5.0 release date and features, we can start to pull together the Key Lime Pie rumours from around the web, with the first sighting of Android 5.0 on a benchmarking website, apparently running on a Sony smartphone. There has previously been speculation that Sony is in line to produce the next Nexus phone, which may lend some credence to this rumour.
Android Key Lime Pie release date
Google has announced that its next developer conference - Google IO - will take place from May 15 to May 17 2013, a month earlier than 2012's June dates. Given that Google announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at 2012's IO conference, it's not unreasonable to expect to see Android 5.0 at next year's event.
As we scour the web for more news, we've also been thinking about what we want to see in Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie. Hopefully the new mobile OS will feature some of these things...
1. Performance Profiles
It's bit of a fuss managing your mobile before bed time. Switching off the sound, turning off data, activating airplane mode and so on, so what Android 5.0 really needs is a simple way of managing performance, and therefore power use, automatically.
We've been given a taste of this with Blocking Mode in Samsung's Jelly Bean update on the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Note 2 but we'd like to see the functionality expanded.
Something like a Gaming mode for max power delivery, an Overnight low-power state for slumbering on minimal power and maybe a Reading mode for no bothersome data connections and a super-low backlight.
Some hardware makers put their own little automated tools in, such as the excellent Smart Actions found within Motorola's RAZR interface, but it'd be great to see Google give us a simple way to manage states.
Another little power strip style widget for phone performance profiles would be an easy way to do it.
Set telephone to BEDTIME SLEEPY MODE
2. Better multiple device support
Google already does quite a good job of supporting serious Android nerds who own several phones and tablets, but there are some holes in its coverage that are rather frustrating.
Take the Videos app which manages your film downloads through the Play Store. Start watching a film on one Android device and you're limited to resuming your film session on that same unit, making it impossible to switch from phone to tablet mid-film.
You can switch between phone and web site players to resume watching, but surely Google ought to understand its fans often have a couple of phones and tabs on the go and fix this for Android Key Lime Pie?
3. Enhanced social network support
Android doesn't really do much for social network users out of the box, with most of the fancy social widgets and features coming from the hardware makers through their own custom skins.
Sony integrates Facebook brilliantly in its phones, and even LG makes a great social network aggregator widget that incorporates Facebook and Twitter - so why are there no cool aggregator apps as part of the standard Android setup?
Yes, Google does a great job of pushing Google+, but, no offence, there are many other more widely used networks that ought to be a little better "baked in" to Android.
4. Line-drawing keyboard options
Another area where the manufacturers have taken a big leap ahead of Google is in integrating clever alternate text entry options in their keyboards. HTC and Sony both offer their own takes on the Swype style of line-drawing text input, which is a nice option to have for getting your words onto a telephone. Get it into Android 5.0 and give us the choice. UPDATE: Google heard us and this feature appeared in Android 4.2.
P-U-T T-H-I-S I-N A-N-D-R-O-I-D 5-.-0
5. A video chat app
How odd is it that Google's put a front-facing camera on the Nexus 7 and most hardware manufacturers do the same on their phones and tablets, yet most ship without any form of common video chat app?
You have to download Skype and hope it works, or find some other downloadable app solution. Why isn't there a Google Live See My Face Chat app of some sort as part of Android? Is it because we're too ugly? Is that what you're saying, Google?
6. Multi-select in the contacts
The Android contacts section is pretty useful, but it could be managed a little better. What if you have the idea of emailing or texting a handful of your friends? The way that's currently done is by emailing one, then adding the rest individually. Some sort of checkbox system that let users scroll through names and create a mailing list on the fly through the contacts listing in Android Key Lime Pie would make this much easier.
Make this a destination, rather than a never-used list
7. Cross-device SMS sync
If you're a constant SIM swapper with more than one phone on the go, chances are you've lost track of your text messages at some point. Google stores these on the phone rather than the SIM card, so it'd be nice if our texts could be either backed up to the SIM, the SD card, or beamed up to the magical invisible cloud of data, for easy and consistent access across multiple devices.
8. A "Never Update" option
This would annoy developers so is unlikely to happen, but it'd be nice if we could refuse app updates permanently in Android 5.0, just in case we'd rather stick with a current version of a tool than be forced to upgrade.
Sure, you can set apps to manual update and then just ignore the update prompt forever, but it'd be nice to know we can keep a favoured version of an app without accidentally updating it. Some of us are still using the beta Times app, for example, which has given free access for a year.
Let us keep older versions. Many people fear change
9. App preview/freebie codes
Something Apple's been doing for ages and ages is using a promo code system to distribute free or review versions of apps. It even makes doing little competitions to drum up publicity for apps much easier, so why's there no similar scheme for Android?
It might encourage developers to stop going down the ad-covered/freemium route if they could charge for an app but still give it away to friends and fans through a promo code system.
10. Final whinges and requests...
It's be nice to be able to sort the Settings screen by alphabetical order, too, or by most commonly used or personal preference, as Android's so packed with a huge list of options these days it's a big old list to scroll through and pick out what you need.
Plus could we have a percentage count for the battery in the Notifications bar for Android 5.0? Just so we know a bit more info than the vague emptying battery icon.
