If you were shopping the LG G4 on AT&T, pre-sale starts tomorrow.
Big Blue lands the G4 with either plastic or their exclusive black leather rear plate. The upgrade to premium leather will cost you though. The plastic G4 will cost $199 on two year contract or $630 outright. The leather G4 will bump you up to $239.99 on contract or $669 off contract.
The only special advertised with the G4 is a $0.99 sale on the LG G Pad F 8.0 which is normally $150 on two year agreement. Though if you buy the G4 through AT&T you can still take advantage of LG’s killer free memory card and battery promotion.
We have a full round up of G4 reviews and comparisons, and you can catch AT&T’s press release below.
Lenovo wrapped up their Tech World conference by talking about the future and showing off some concept products.
As we throw around buzz words like “Internet of Things” the tech industry is actually facing it’s next major hurdle in how we can better integrate data and services into people’s daily lives. Products like smartwatches are another step in that conversation.
Lenovo’s Magic View concept takes the standard smartwatch face we all understand (which looks a lot like the display found on the Moto360), and adds a second virtual screen. That small rectangular patch below the watch face is a virtual privacy display which can project content up to 20 times larger than the watch face.
Projection was a hot topic for phones too. Smart Cast is the world’s first laser projector in a mobile phone. Not only will it display the contents of your screen onto a flat surface, but it will also allow you to interact with the UI through the projection.
Lastly, Lenovo announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring exclusive features to Cortana on Lenovo PC’s. REACHit will provide cloud search and sync access to Cortana for popular services like DropBox and Google Drive. Files in the cloud and on various PC’s, Tablets, and Phones will all be accessible to users regardless of where they are or which device they’re using.
As Lenovo continues their lead in the PC space, most of the talk at Tech World focused on a future where services and information are a bit more fluid than the traditional PC experience. Buying Motorola was certainly a step in expanding their influence in the mobile market, and now “Internet of Things” is looking like the next arena they want to play in.
Pre-Orders for the LG G4 start today at T-Mobile, and Lil Magenta is throwing in a sweet offer for folks putting their money down early.
Not only does it appear that they are selling the leather edition for the same price as the plastic back G4, but they’ll also throw in a 128GB MicroSD card for free. On top of LG’s promotion of a 32GB and a spare battery, early G4 adopters could be rocking some serious storage on their phones for cheap.
As Lenovo continues their lead as the number one PC manufacturer, the company took the wraps off of two new lines of laptops available next month.
Lenovo Z41/51
Billed as the “Ultimate multimedia workstation for music and movie lovers”, these new Z laptops are focused on home entertainment. Full HD displays will be powered by Intel processors (up to a Core i7) and there will be options for discreet AMD graphics. Dolby is on tap for their surround sound technology, and the Z51 will also come with Intel’s RealSense 3D front facing camera. The RealSense camera can be used for gaming, capturing 3D photos, or scanning objects for 3D printing.
The 14″ Z41 and 15″ Z51 will start at $499. A Z51 with 3D camera and 8GB of RAM will sell for $599
Lenovo Ideapad 100
Getting down to basics, this new Ideapad is focused on delivering a streamlined experience at a low price.
In 14 and 15 inch flavors, Ideapad 100 borrows from recent tablet success using an Intel BayTrail low power processor, and can be configured with up to 500GB of storage. The slim notebook will start at $249 when it’s released later next month.
We’ve been playing with more polls, and we started off with a doozy.
Shooting individual comparisons between some of the top smartphone cameras on the market, we put the results up to you our readers and viewers. Galaxy S6, Lumia 930, LG G4. Which phone came out on top? Based on your vote, The LG G4 is currently the best camera available on a smartphone today!
The G4 goes on sale early next month, but we’ve already got the most in-depth review of LG’s newest shooter available online. Hit the video below, and if you want to see the individual comparisons we’ve got them linked underneath.
As part of their roll out for Windows 10, Microsoft will be making their services as accessible as possible to people on all operating systems. They’ll be delivering music apps, for example, which will tie into OneDrive for people to stream their entire music collection anywhere they have data.
Most interesting however is the recent reveal that their digital assistant Cortana will also be going cross platform. Syncing any phone with a Windows 10 PC will setup their companion app which provides deep integration with services on the phone.
Similar to Google Now and Siri, Cortana can look for relevant information in emails and calendar entries, and can respond to voice commands. She’s become popular for having a bit more personality than offerings from Google or Apple.
It’s an interesting move from Microsoft as they shift away from making popular services exclusive to their ecosystem, and opens the door to broad adoption from people on every platform. You can catch more info in their announcement video below.
I think the iPhone’s home button is a bit over-worked. Single press, double press, long press, music functionality, and an accessibility custom triple press. At some point some other hardware control might help this poor beleaguered button.
Kickstarter project Halo Back is looking to aid the home button with a special screen protector that will add a bottom mounted back button. As the iPhone has gotten larger, reaching up to the top of the screen for those apps that have software back buttons isn’t quite as convenient as it used to be.
It would seem a number of people agree with Halo Back as the project has already raised over $100,000, over five times their initial goal, and there’s still sixteen days left to back the project.
You can watch their pitch video below, or head directly to their project page for more info.
Instagram continues to ignore some of the best smartphone cameras on the market by letting their BETA app on Windows Phone continue to rot. With no updates for well over a year, we can hope they’re working on a Windows 10 app (at least porting over their iOS app), but in the meantime we have Windows Phone developer extraordinaire Rudy Huyn.
His third party Instagram client for Windows Phones 6Tag has long been the gold standard for sharing higher quality pics on Microsoft’s OS. Now his latest update brings video uploading to the table, alongside a few new photo filters.
6Tag has always been able to shoot video, but it was unable to upload previously shot video. A new video editing menu in 6Tag replicates that functionality from Instagram’s app on iOS and Android.
