Upcoming Smart Phone Features, Specs and Release Date ! NOkIA 625

It’s almost impossible to imagine a time when we didn’t have mobile phones. Yet it was less than twenty years ago that the real mobile explosion happened. Anyone over the age of about twenty was born and probably grew up in a time when not everyone had a phone, when they were still considered a luxury. How times have changed.
These days, the vast majority of the global adult population have at least one mobile phone. That’s because living without a mobile phone is a terrible idea. Not just in terms of communication but because of all the other incredible things they can do. Smartphone apps can help you find your way, purchase items online and even help you find your car keys. Without sounding like too much of a cliche, whatever you want to do, there’s an app for it.

Image Source – Gizmodo Australia
However, with millions of phones available and just as many providers and types of contract, it can be tough just locating a good deal…..never mind securing one. With different packages aimed at different people, free gifts designed to entice you in and some incredible handsets on offer, choosing the right deal for you isn’t as easy as it looks.
Shop around online
If you know where to look, you can still get great deals on mobile phones. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that place is online. Do a bit of searching and you can almost always find the handset you want at the right price. Whether it is conference-calling capability, gaming or gadgets, shop around and you can find it. Even if you can’t find the right deal, locate the phone and start to haggle. You’d be amazed what kind of deals you can get if you dig in and ask for more. Providers want you under contract and they are usually willing to be flexible to make this happen. Stay tough and you can get a lot more than they were initially prepared to give you.
The power is in your hands
If you have an existing contract, then it’s always worth trying to upgrade to get the handset you want the most. Use your leverage as an existing customer and apply the pressure. You should usually be able to negotiate a good deal.
Whenever you’re negotiating, it pays to know what you’re talking about so do your homework and arm yourself with the facts of your bill, available deals and competitor prices. If they know they’re dealing with someone who is clued up, they’re more likely to give you what you want.

India's most popular indigenous smartphone maker Micromax, released a teaser video of the next generation metal-clad Canvas 4 smartphone in its official Facebook page on Saturday.

There’s a lot to be excited about after Monday's announcement of iOS 7.  Flashy new design! Panels! Automatic app updates! Voice calls over FaceTime! Such system-wide changes aside, some of the biggest changes to iOS are found in Apple’s own mobile apps. Several of the stock Apple apps for iOS are being revamped, gaining new features and deeper integration with the Apple ecosystem.
But a more full-featured mobile platform wasn’t music to everyone’s ears this week: As details of iOS 7 unfolded, the only thing some third-party app developers could hear was a sad news,  That's because many of the features their apps provide will now be built into iOS 7 or its apps. Here are some of the apps that could be made redundant when iOS 7 arrives.

Streaming radio apps

iTunes radio, is Apple’s first dive into a streaming music service for iOS. Users can listen to stations inspired by a particular track, artist, or genre, and specify songs they like and songs they never want to hear again. Apple has also created 200 featured stations, including Songs Trending on Twitter, Summer Songs, and Artists on Tour. Now there's a concept we’ve never seen before!

Oh, wait. Yes, we have. It’s called Pandora.

iTunes Radio certainly won’t kill off Pandora, but it will offer some enticing perks to those who already use iTunes. The service will be available on mobile devices, desktops, and Apple TV. It’ll be built right into Apple’s Music app on iOS 7 and into a future version of iTunes. Every streamed song will include a purchase link, making it easy to add that track to your personal iTunes account. Plus, it’ll be a key feature of iTunes, which means it’ll be free, and Apple made no mention of a daily or monthly streaming cap.
Unfortunately, iTunes Radio includes audio ads, but so does Pandora. But if you’re an iTunes Match subscriber, you'll be able to listen to iTunes Radio ad-free.

Flashlight apps 

iOS 7 will feature a new utility in its toolbox: A flashlight app that makes use of the iPhone’s built-in camera flash. An App Store search for flashlight yields 1273 results; that’s 1273 apps that will basically perform the same function as something that will now come standard with iOS. Most of these flashlight apps are free, but some range in price from $1 to $3. Your days are numbered, Flashlight, Flashlight+  and Flashlight!!.

Whether the weather is cold…

Apple’s Weather app does what it’s supposed to: it tells you the current and projected weather forecast for locations around the world. But it does so without much pizzazz. Its city profiles and weather info are a little lackluster, with the daily or hourly forecast providing only basic temperatures and conditions.
Other weather apps, such as the Weather channel  and  Forecast io, have long overshadowed Apple’s Weather. They have neat animations, more detailed forecast info (things like wind speed and humidity levels), and a more enticing design overall.
That will change with iOS 7, because the stock Weather app is getting a dramatic facelift. Weather details will appear over a large graphic of current weather conditions, which sometimes feature animation. (Apple senior vice president Craig Federeghi demoed the app with a stormy sky complete with flashing bolts of lightning.) Users can still save city profiles, which are displayed as stacked tiles with an overview of current conditions in each city. The new design looks sleek and elegant, with more detailed information to boot.
One weather app that is sure to suffer is Yahoo Weather. Apple still pulls weather information from Yahoo, and the new Weather app's design looks oddly similar to the standalone Yahoo Weather app for  iOS . (Is it any coincidence that Apple just gave that Yahoo app an Apple design Award?) Although it still isn’t quite as detailed as other offerings, Apple’s built-in app should provide users with a better weather experience than before.

Photo filters

Even though Instagram is the undisputed king of filters, the App Store still has plenty of other photo apps designed to provide these retro special effects. They're probably most attractive to users who want the fun filters, but don’t want to play by Facebook’s rules and iffy privacy standards.
But with iOS 7, iPhoneographers won’t need to rely on another camera app just for filters, because Apple’s Camera will include a pack of built-in filters that can be applied to your photos. You can choose a filter before or after a photo is taken, and if you don’t like the outcome, you can remove the filter or try a different one. Camera even includes a square-shaped shooting format, which eliminates the need to manually crop a photo in Instagram if you do want to share it there later.
The new version of Camera will come with only nine filters to start—a modest collection when compared to those dedicated utilities—but they can be used with Camera’s other settings and shooting styles. Photo enthusiasts will want to hold on to more professional photo apps, such as Camera+ or Camera awesome, which include a bevy of camera settings and shooting modes that Camera doesn’t offer. However, casual photographers will likely find Camera to be a joy to use. Lesser-known filter apps, such as Pixlr-o-matic, Camera Bag, and PhotoToaster, face some tough times ahead.

Password management

OS X Mavericks, The next installment of Apple's non-mobile operating system, will include a new feature called iCloud Keychain, Apple’s solution to multiple password management. iCloud Keychain will remember website logins, credit card information (but not your security code), and Wi-Fi logins, and will integrate with Safari on your Mac. Safari will remember your password for you, or autosuggest a new password, and then sync it to your unique Keychain. iCloud Keychain syncs all of this information across all of your devices—including those running iOS—encrypted and securely.

This could create some steep competition for third-party password management software developers.
Until now, Mac users have largely had to rely on password managers—like 1Password—to store and sync our passwords, but now we'll have an alternative that doesn't cost anything extra. (1Password, on the other hand, costs $50 for a single Mac license and $18 for iOS.) Though third-party password managers offer additional features—they work with multiple browsers, for example, and provide different ways to create secure passwords—many standard Mac and iOS users will probably find that iCloud Keychain suits their needs just fine.

Innovation is key

Users who already have these third-party apps installed might be inclined to keep them around, but also might find that they don't use those apps as often once iOS 7 comes along. My guess is that these types of apps will see fewer App Store downloads after the launch of iOS 7 later this year—if their developers stand still and make no dramatic changes to their apps. But by the same token, these new standard Apple features could also inspire those same third-party developers to innovate and make their existing apps better to remain competitive.

editors note-Updated on June 13 00:50 a.m. PT to add correct price information for 1Password. Prices listed above reflect the full price, but 1Password is currently being sold at a 50 percent discount..

So here Apple officialy launched the IOS7 , lets consider about some of it;s pro's and con's !! afterall apart from these reviews i feel , Apple has returned with some great offerings this time , have a  look at some of the features .
iOS 7, the latest version of Apple’s flagship mobile operating system, is here, and it’s almost entirely different from the versions that came before. Gone are the  SKEUOMORPHIC designs and 3D effects, replaced by Sir Jony Ive’s “flat design.” Rumors had been flying for weeks about the new OS and now it’s here and it is, at least at this early reckoning, a massive change for the six year old operating system.





First, we must remember that Ive, Apple’s industrial designer now in control of software following the departure of Scott Forstall, isn’t a believer in interfaces that copy real-world objects. In the past, making the Notes app look like a legal pad or the calendar app look like a Moleskine calendar notebook were part of the iOS design philosophy, as ingrained in the OS as “Slide To Unlock.” All that is gone now.
Are you ready for a whole new world ?

New Look:

• iOS 7 has a new font leading the way, which seems to be a sort of Helvetica Neue Ultra. It’s very skinny, clean, and it was hinted at in the iOS 7 banners that went up for WWDC yesterday.
• Instead of white bars on a black background, Apple will now tell you what kind of service coverage you have with five little dots, which are white and grey depending on how strong the signal is across a translucent background.
• The lock screen is changed for the first time in iOS’s history, with no more shine top or bottom bars for slide to unlock or the clock. Instead, Slide to unlock is translucent above the background image.
• Default app icons are now flatter, but not quite flat, just as predicted.
• The apps all seem to have a white base, except for the stocks app which has a black background and the weather app, which shows motion in the background to convey the current weather.
• The keyboard is more white, than grey, with a translucency that lets you see what’s underneath the keyboard.
  
  

  New Features

  Control Center

• Control Center is a pull-up tray that is available in your lock screen.
• You can adjust brightness, volume, and other settings including Wifi, Airplane mode, rotation lock, or Bluetooth.
• The Control Center even offers a flashlight, along with tabs for music, camera, and other quick-access apps.
• The Control Center takes on the environment it’s in, so if you swipe up while you’re in mail, it will have the same blue and white coloring under that translucent panel.
  
  
  

  Multitasking

• iOS 7 lets you multitask between all third-party apps with much better battery consumption.
• You can double-tap the home button to enter into multi-tasking mode, just like always, but the interface for multitasking has been revamped. It appears to offer live previews, but Apple wasn’t clear about that.
  
  

  Safari

• Safari opens straight into full screen mode now, with the option to pull down to bring up the search bar at the top.
• The search field has been improved to be a unified smart search field, which lets you have access to all your favorite websites with a single tap.
• Tabs come with a totally new interface, scrolling in a vertical carousel, and there are no longer any limits. In other words, you can have as many tabs as you want, as opposed to just 8 like before. Swipe a tab off to the side to throw it away.
• The new Safari is integrated with iCloud keychain from OS X Mavericks, and also comes with parental controls.
  

  AirDrop

• You can share sharesheets with other people by simply tapping their name. No NFC required.
• Airdrop supports iPhone 5, iPad 4th gen, iPad Mini
  
  

  Camera And Photos

• The Camera app lets you swipe between your various camera types, such as panorama or HDR so you can quickly take a pic instead of fumbling around with settings.
• Photos marks the first update to the photo gallery on iOS since it was introduced.
• You can search based on date, and location, within the photos app.
• Instagram must be flattered — Apple has introduced photo filters so you can add a little professionalism to the picture.
• Users can share via AirDrop, iCloud photo-sharing, as well as shared Photo Streams.
• You can even share video with iCloud photo-sharing.
  
  

  Siri:

• Siri has a new voice! It sounds similar, but also weird. You can choose a male or female voice, if you like. Voices include languages like French, German, and other languages “over time.”
• The visual UI has also been upgraded, with a sound wave going along the bottom.
  
• Siri has also been integrated with settings, letting you tell her to turn on bluetooth, or lower the screen brightness.
• The company has also added support for Twitter, Wikipedia, and shows web search results direct from Bing.

iOS in the Car

• iOS in the Car depends a lot on Siri.
• It puts the iOS homescreen on the screen of your car, and lets you search for directions, listen to music, etc.
  

  iTunes Radio:

• Apple has finally introduced the much-anticipated iTunes Radio, which gives a Genius-like experience to the entire 26-million title iTunes catalog.
• You can see the full list of songs on each station by clicking history, with purchase and preview buttons built right in to send you to the iTunes store.
• iTunes Radio also lets you customize each station by clicking a star to show that you want more of this type of music.
• iTunes Match users will get an ad-free experience, but others will be able to use the app for free with a few audio and text ads.
  
  

  Activation Lock:

• This is for those of us who have had an iPhone stolen.
• If a thief steals your phone and tries to turn off Find My iPhone, they can no longer turn the device back on without your iCloud password.
• Users can also block messages and calls from other users.

Sony corporation's PlayStation 4 won the initial skirmish over next-generation video-game consoles by exploiting the weak spots in MICROSOFT CORP. (MSFT)’s plan for the Xbox One: price and used-game policies.

The result has been a rapid shift in expectations for the two machines, with Sony gaining the upper hand with fans and early sales against Microsoft, the console leader for the past two years. The Xbox One will sell for a premium-priced $499 and limit users’ ability to buy, trade and resell games. Sony, once dominant in the industry, came in $100 cheaper and won’t limit transactions, and has been rewarded with a boom in orders.

“A lot of people who are hardcore gamers are going to be turned off by the Xbox One,” said Gabe Bethke, 19, a sophomore at Occidental College in Los Angeles, who watched online and owns an Xbox 360. “It has too many rules and restrictions.”

Fresh Orders

Sony is cashing in with higher-than-expected pre-orders for the PS4 at Game stop corp. (GME), the biggest video-game retailer, according to Andrew House, president of Sony Network Entertainment. He said the company has delayed a decision on whether to start selling in Asia,  by year-end in order keep up with demand in the U.S. and Europe.
The PS4 was outselling Xbox One on the U.S. Website of online retailer Amazon.com Inc. yesterday, taking the No. 1 spot on the video-games category bestseller list. Xbox One was No. 2, although Amazon had sold out of its special Day One edition of the console.

Sony Resurgence

Sony lost its lead in the current generation of video-game hardware by charging an initial $599 for the PlayStation 3 seven years ago. Nintendo’s cheaper Wii sold the most units during that generation, although Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has topped the monthly charts more recently.
Now Microsoft has to justify an extra $100 for its machine, which goes on sale in November -- a premium that largely goes to cover the Kinect motion sensor that some gamers aren’t convinced they need.

Kinect, the Xbox Live service, content partnerships with the NFL, access to Skype video calls and unique features such as the SmartGlass app that allows users to switch between screens set Microsoft apart, Don Mattrick, president of the company’s interactive entertainment unit, said in an interview. The console will have 13 exclusive next-generation games, including the next “Halo.”

‘Lame’ Connection

“We’re overdelivering value against other choices,” Mattrick said in an interview. “Any modern product these days, when you look at it, $499 isn’t a ridiculous price point.”
Microsoft’s plan to require an Internet connection every 24 hours to check game licenses has proved unpopular. Game discs can be resold only through authorized retailers, can be given away only once, to friends who have been listed for at least 30 days, and publishers can opt out of supporting resales. Titles, stored online and on the machine, can be shared with as many as 10 family members.

No Change

Since its press conference on June 10, Sony has clarified its stance on so-called digital rights management. Like Microsoft’s Xbox One, the PS4 won’t prevent publishers from instituting limits on trade-ins and resales. However, that represents no change from the current PlayStation 3.

Audience Cheers

The two companies’ June 10 press events were mirror images of each other. Microsoft went first, highlighting its exclusive titles and unique features like SmartGlass and the Kinect motion sensing controller. In the closing minutes of the event, Microsoft announced the price and was met with a gasp followed by silence.

Ebb, Flow

Both machines will compete against Nintendo’s $300 Wii U, which was released in November and has generated disappointing sales. Nintendo announced coming titles for the new machine based on characters including Zelda, Super Mario and Smash Bros.
For game publishers, the developments are encouraging, said Frank Gibeau, president of labels at Electronic Arts (EA)'s., the second-largest U.S. game publisher. While Sony and Microsoft have differences in their approaches to online services, title slates and how they use the power of the machines, the dialog with the public is still very early, he said..