Previously we reported on the little teaser Angry Birds made on their Facebook page earlier today. The secret is out and they ARE releasing a totally new game called “Angry Birds Space”. Yahoo! has the official info on the game and it is going to be something completely new for the franchise.
Angry Birds Space is going to be taking the birds to outer-space. You’ll be going from planet to planet. The physics elements are going to be perfected even further, bringing in things like zero gravity and lightspeed to the mix.
The game is going to come out in March 2012 and it is going to be released on every OS simultaneously. Our old Angry Birds will still make a comeback to this one with the addition of a few new characters. We can’t wait to get our hands on this.
The fourth installment in the Bourne movie franchise does not include Matt Damon. This isn’t a reboot of the franchise, they’re just introducing a new agent in the mix and the series will be taken over by this actor from here on in. Jeremy Renner is going to be playing the legacy.
Check out the trailer below:
People have already started complaining about this major change, having seen three movies with the brilliant performance of Damon made them believe the role couldn’t be taken over by anyone else. It’s like the Bond movies, every three or four movies later we see a new Bond. If this is how this franchise sees it, the Bourne series could very well see a lot of sequels. The trailer looks good and Jeremy looks pretty damn awesome.
Do you like the idea of Matt Damon being out of the series?
Happened just late last night, the Wateen Telecom main offices in Lahore caught fire at around 7:00 pm. The office was located at Auriga Complex in Main Boulevard Lahore and was housing all of the data centres and infrastructure of Wateen. The fire quickly broke out and the building was completely destroyed.
Reportedly, there were about a hundred employees in the office when this happened and they all plunged to safety, no injuries were reported. Abu Dhabi Group gives full support to the company in every form of aid possible, while other telecom giants are joining in to provide a helping hand to Wateen. The company suffered a total loss of 2 billion in finances.
Mr. Naeem Zamindar, the CEO of Wateen Telecom, had this to say:
“Our first and foremost concern was to ensure that everyone present in the building was safe and accounted for. This not only included Wateen employees, but also other tenants in the building. We are thankful that there was no loss of life and that everyone was safely evacuated.”
He further added:
“Wateen Telecom has in place several network redundancies that automatically kick-in in the event of an emergency. Moreover, the company has alternate arrangements for the customer care helpline. Our data and enterprise customers will not be materially affected as our data warehousing and networking facilities are located elsewhere. We are therefore confident that our customers will not suffer loss of quality and that our services will continue as normal.”
We are glad no one was hurt during this fire. The reason for the fire is still unclear but some say it broke out because of a faulty generator.
Spyware Doctor has been synonymous with Anti-Spyware for as long as I can remember. It won a lot of awards and merits from big names like PC World and CNET. We finally got our hands on the latest 2012 version to find out if the program is really worth the money and PC resources.
The Look
The program has really grown over the years, Spyware Doctor has really upped the ante on the looks. The new blue and green go really well, they even changed the icon from a doctor to a nice radioactive mark. The accessibility is also easier this time around, everything is right where it should be without the need of doing a lot of searching to accomplish the simpler functions. Kudos to PC Tools for the interface.
IntelliGuard
IntelliGuard is Spyware Doctor’s IP. It’s a collection of security systems combined into one to protect users from almost every little threat type possible. Version 2012 comes with a well-updated and well-equipped IntelliGuard, it gives off that nice little feeling of being safe. The new Behavior Guard technology is powered by Threatfire and it keeps a close eye on how your PC reacts and responds to certain applications and new installations and even blocks any and all malicious attempts on your system.
Secure Browsing At Its Finest
Like many other security programs, Spyware Doctor adds its own little app to the mix. Adds a little extension to your browser to protect you from bad websites that are sure to infect.
How Did It Perform? Our Test.
So I tested Spyware Doctor on two computers. The first one was a heavily infected PC with little to no protection, the second was a heavily protected PC with all the latest updates and its the one I use for all my software reviews. The results of the first PC were very predictable, but I thought it would be more interesting posting the results of the second PC (the protected one). So here goes:
The Mode We Chose
For the scan, we selected the Full Scan mode, although Intelli-Scan is the better and faster option but we wanted the program to scan each and every bit of the hard disk.
Total Time Spent
So the PC I performed this scan had a total HDD space of 700 GB, performing a full scan gave me the time of 3 hours in total which is really an impressive time for such a huge amount of space to scan.
Scan Results
So, long story short, Spyware Doctor found 242 infections on my overly-protected computer. I admit the infections were all low-level (adware and trackware) but they still count as malicious forms. THIS is why Spyware Doctor is so powerful, the detection rate is just incredible.
The Only Con We Found
It was all a walk in the park during our review, apart from one little problem. Spyware Doctor has still not taken care of the incredible amounts of resources it uses, a huge footprint on the RAM, the start-up time doubles and if you shut this program down it has its own progress bar to shut down. If they can somehow maneuver the program into being a little lighter, it would have zero flaws but I guess nothing is perfect. I still wont complain a lot about the resource usage, seeing how Spyware Doctor has such an awesome detection rate, it is worth the resources.
The Final Verdict
We give Spyware Doctor 2012 a 4 out of 5. The only thing bad about this program is that people with slower PCs wont be using it. The incredible detection rate, the powerful protection, the super-intelligent Intelli-Guard, all of these features stand tall. This software has its own genre in the protection market and is still THE best anti-spyware program we’ve come across yet.
The HTC Explorer is HTC’s first budget oriented smartphone running on Google’s Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread with the Taiwanese company’s latest Sense 3.5 property skin on top. HTC is mostly known for it’s mid range and high end phones like the Desire and Sensation but the Explorer is sort of a first for the company. At the time of released the HTC Explorer will be one of the cheapest Android phones to be available in the market, being free on most carriers.
Unboxing
Box
The HTC Explorer comes inside a small rectangular box, sliding the top cover off presents you the phone. Under the phone is the charger, USB cable, the standard manuals and warranty information. Although the Explorer is a budget oriented smartphone we were hoping for some earphones, Samsung cared to pack them in their Galaxy Y so we can’t understand why not HTC.
Specifications
The HTC Explorer has the following specifications:
Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support with no CDMA version available as of yet.
14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
3.2-inch 256K-color TFT capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution (320 x 480)
3MP fixed-focus camera with geotagging and face detection
VGA video @ 24fps
microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
microSD slot (up to 32GB)
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
Accelerometer, proximity sensor
Stereo FM radio with RDS
Hardware
The HTC Explorer sports a Quad Band GSM radio with dual band 3G along with HSPDA and HSUPA support which will make sure your phone works almost everywhere and you receive the fastest 3G speeds. The screen on the Explorer is a 3.2-inch TFT touchscreen with 256k colors and a resolution of 320 x 480 (HVGA). The screen as you must have guessed by now is of very low quality with bad viewing angles, but it’s bearable.
The camera on on the Explorer is a fixed focus 3MP camera which is pretty mediocre by today’s standards. It records video in VGA resolutions at 24 frames per second, video and still samples are later in this review. The 600 MHz Cortex A5 is kind of on the slow side for Android, multitasking can really bring it down to it’s knees. There’s also 512MB of RAM and an Adreno 200 GPU powering the Explorer.There’s 90MB of built in memory which can be expanded up to 32GB thanks to it’s microSD card slot. The other standard stuff includes WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, standard microUSB port, 3.5mm headphone jack and GPS. The speaker on the Explorer is very mediocre but a guy on a budget can’t really complain.
Design
The HTC Explorer takes part from the standard aluminum HTC build and is made from a special sort of plastic which has a rubbery feel to it. I must say the phone feels very good in the hand, much better than the Galaxy Y which is sort of a direct competitor to the phone. The phone has a strong feel but it still creeks when squeezed from the sides, which is a huge disappointment.
The Explorer measures in at 101.3 x 59.4 x 12.4 mm and weighs just 108 g. The phone is much smaller in real life than what I expected from the pictures and looks like one of those oval rocks you find on the beach. The phone will be available in a variety of colors; namely in Black, Purple, White, Orange and Light Blue.
The front of the HTC Explorer has the 3.2-inch screen with the HTC logo on top and the four standard Android capacitive buttons below which are nicely spaced and are easy to press. Above the screen are the proximity and ambient light sensors. On the left side of the phone we have the microUSB slot which unfortunately doesn’t have a cover and on the right side we have rubbery volume rocker. On the back we have the fixed focus camera and a brushed metal strip with an engraved HTC logo in the middle which looks very nice. You can remove the back by pressing your thumb against the top of the phone. Removing the back presents you the 1230 mAh battery, SIM cart and microSD card slot.
Video Sample
Camera Sample
Software
The HTC Explorer runs on Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread with HTC’s Sense 3.5 propriety UI skin. As I mentioned in my HTC Rhyme review, HTC Sense 3.5 is a brilliant custom skin and it shows on the Explorer.
Sense 3.5 features new and updated widgets along with a brand new menu and app drawer background. Although Sense 3.5 is pretty light you can notice a bit of lag due to the Explorer’s slow CPU. This can be tackled by overclocking the CPU and sacrificing battery life but that certainly isn’t recommended. HTC Sense 3.5 has also been tweaked a bit to cope with the Explorer’s lower resolution screen.
I had doubts on how the slow processor will perform while browsing the Internet, surprisingly it did pretty good. Full web pages with flash content loaded much quicker than I thought they would, don’t expect it to play 720p videos from YouTube, though 480p ones should work fine.
The 1230 mAh battery of the Explorer coupled with the small screen and Sense 3.5 result in awesome battery life. It lasted me a day and a half on average usage with occasional gaming, watching videos and browsing the internet.
Just like the the Rhyme, the HTC Explorer is also fully integrated with HTCSense.com. You can download wallpapers, themes and other neat content along with backing up your phone’s data and even delete it if your phone gets stolen.
Performance
Performance on the Explorer is pretty good considering the price, benchmark scores are above. It scored 2200 on the AnTuTu Benchmark, 944 on Quandrant which is impressively more than the Samsung Galaxy S, 18.84 seconds on Linpack, 3262 on CF-Bench. Pretty decent scores don’t you think?
The Explorer also has excellent telephony capabilities, I had no reception problems or dropped calls throughout my testing.
Conclusion
The HTC Explorer is a very good budget phone, dare I say it better than the Galaxy Y. HTC has always been known for their high class and elegant designs and have managed to maintain their signature style with the Explorer while keeping it affordable. Our only complaints are the mediocre camera, no microSD card and earphones in box and creaky body. Overall the Explorer impressed us a lot, both hardware and software wise and is definitely recommended.
GTA V rumors and speculations are buzzing with anticipation as Rockstar closes in on releasing the second trailer to their highly anticipated title. A couple of weeks ago, it was reported by various sources that Ned Luke will be doing the voice-over work for the main character in the game and he will be a completely new addition to the series, this destroyed the hopes and dreams to see Tommy Vercetti making a comeback as Tommy is starred by the infamous Ray Liotta. Even the official GTA 5 IMDB page enlisted Ned Luke as the lead character of the game. It has just been revealed that the entire Ned Luke story was a hoax and the details have been removed from the IMDB page.
GTA 5 might actually have Tommy Vercetti in it. While nothing is confirmed right now, we are back to where we were ever since the trailer came out. Ned Luke is not playing the lead since his name has now been taken off from the IMDB listing and he even deleted his Twitter account. This is all either another hoax and he eventually will be exposed as the lead or we will see the real man behind the voice pretty soon. Rockstar is notorious for keeping every little detail under wraps until they themselves want to expose it, so this could also be their way of hiding the inevitable.
In other news, the appearance of CJ is still a mystery in GTA 5. The location is San Andreas, so we are bound to meet our old friend but it hasn’t been confirmed. We see an African American highlighted in various different scenes of the first GTA 5 trailer, could that be CJ? Would he look like that in present time? Keep it locked here for more updates from GTA 5 as it develops.
First off, we have some sweet visuals from the latest DLC offering from the good people at Ubisoft. While it’s still a long wait before Assassin’s Creed 3 would be in our hands, people can quench their gaming thirsts with the non-stop releases of new DLCs from the studios.
Call Of Duty Elite Liberation
Next, we have a new map-pack for the latest Call Of Duty MW3 online play. This is the first of many so get ready to burn your wallets.
Cross Of The Dutchman
We always love it when good Indie games come out. This is a take on Shank and is super-awesome, the story of a peaceful farmer turned assassin. Hack and slash your way through epically designed levels.
Sad news for the gaming industry today, Insomniac – the guys behind games like Ratchet & Clank, Resistance and Spyro announced that they won’t be making any more Resistance games.
“We won’t be making any more Resistances,” said Insomniac CEO Ted Price in an interview with VG247 at Southern Methodist University. Looks like they’ve done all they can with the Resistance franchise and are moving to new horizons, namely their recently announced multiplatform co-op shooter – Overstrike.
Resistance first made it’s appearance as Resistance: Fall of Man in 2006 followed by sequels in 2008 and 2011. The games received generally positive reviews but failed to sell well, one of the reasons Insomniac decided to let the franchise go maybe?
Today we have more from the DLC world than the mainstream trailers! Let’s start it off:
Darksiders 2: Death Eternal
Sequel to Darksiders and has been delayed for quite a while now.
Battlefield Heroes Vehicle Mayhem
No, this is NOT Battlefield 4.
Dead Island Ryder White DLC
I wasn’t fortunate enough to play this game after the first fifteen minutes, for those of you who still want more of the zombie hack and slash action, check out this new DLC.
Kinect Star Wars
Is this game really going to make you feel the force?
That’s it for today folks, check back tomorrow for a fresh batch of awesome new trailers.
The HTC Rhyme, codenamed the Bliss, is the first phone to come with HTC’s newest Android skin – HTC Sense 3.5. It’s also the first HTC phone to be dubbed a ladies phone, packing pretty average hardware which will surely turn off the hardware geeks but might prove to be more than enough for a modern woman. The Rhyme also comes with matching accessories, the most interesting of which is a charm. A Charm is kind of hard to explain, it’s a small box with an LED inside connected to the phone via its 3.5mm headphone jack. Its main use is to notify the user of any notifications, this comes in real handy if you carry your phone inside a bag.
Unboxing
Box
The HTC Rhyme come in a moderately sized box which contains the phone itself, a desktop dock, tangle free earphones, AC Power adapter with a removable USB cable, 8GB microSD card and the aforementioned charm itself along with the standard instruction manuals and warranty information.
Specifications
Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support (Also available in CDMA)
14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
3.7″ 16M-color capacitive S-LCD touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
microSD card slot (class 4 8GB card in the bundle)
5 MP autofocus camera with single LED flash; face detection, geotagging, HDR mode, image auto-upload
720p video recording @ 30fps and slo-mo videos (2x at WVGA)
Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
GPS with A-GPS
Stereo FM radio with RDS
Accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensor
Front facing camera, video call
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
Hardware
The HTC Rhyme is no Galaxy Nexus or iPhone 4S, it’s meant for a more budget and feminine market so such powerful hardware won’t do a lot of good. The Rhyme runs on a single core 1 GHz Scorpion processor, Andreno 205 GPU and 768MB of RAM. It’s available in both CDMA and GSM but not in a two in one Global phone variant. The Rhyme sports a 3.7-inch S-LCD which has impressed me a whole lot, even though the resolution is kind of low, HTC has definitely done some work which makes the screen super sharp with almost no pixelation at all. The viewing angles are decent and you can very well make out the screen in bright daylight so I don’t really have any complaints.
The phone comes with an 8GB microSD card which makes the total storage 12GB (with 4GB of internal storage). The 5MP camera on the back is pretty decent for taking photos in daylight, in moderately dark situations though the pictures start to lose quality. The camera records videos in 720p at 30fps and in slow motion at 2x WVGA. Video quality is pretty mediocre and could definitely be better.
The Speaker is placed right beside the back camera on the Rhyme which produces moderately loud sounds; although you won’t be able to hear your phone if it’s inside a bag, one of the reasons you should always carry the charm with you.
Design
The HTC Rhyme has a pretty standard HTC design with a non removable battery, a trend they started with the HTC Radar. It measures in at around 119 x 60.8 x 10.9 mm and weighs 130 g which makes it a very compact and handy phone. The front is dominated by the beautiful 3.7-inch WVGA display with the standard Android four capacitive button layout below. There’s also a VGA camera for video calls and self photo shoots on the top right corner of the phone. On the back we have the 5MP camera, LED flash and speaker on top, with the HTC logo engraved on a silver strip which cuts off right above the removable battery cover. There’s also a trio of electrical connectors right below the camera used to connect the phone with the desktop dock. Under the battery cover you can find the microSD and SIM card slots above the 1600mAh battery.
The right side of the phone sports the volume button while the left side holds the microUSB protected by a rubber cover, unfortunately there’s no dedicated camera button. On the top of the phone there’s the 3.5mm jack and lock/unlock button. On the bottom of the phone you can find the sole mic.
Overall the phone looks exceptionally good, the build is solid and feels very good in the hands. Consider me impressed.
Video Sample
Still Photo Samples (Click To Enhance)
Software
The HTC Rhyme runs on Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread and is the first phone to come with HTC’s propriety skin – Sense 3.5 as we mentioned at the start of the review. It’s a minor update to Sense 3.0 which came with the HTC Sensation. HTC has greatly optimized 3.5 as compared to 3.0 which lagged even on dual core phones.
Sense 3.5 on the Rhyme has a newer look as compared to 3.0. The wheel on the bottom is now gone and is replaced by a menu and phone button on the homescreen, it’s still present on the lockscreen though. New widgets have been added along with old ones being updated. Sense 3.0 lagged a lot, this is where 3.5 shines the best – navigating Android on the Rhyme is smooth and there’s almost no lag at all. There’s also a new color scheme replacing the usual black in the menus and app drawer, which if you think about it should have been done a long time ago.
Battery life on the Rhyme is excellent, the 1600 mAh battery lasted me over 34 hours with moderately heavy browsing, gaming and watching videos.
You can also sign up for HTC Sense to get more wallpapers, themes and other neat stuff for your phone. The HTC Rhyme unfortunately doesn’t come with Beats by Dr. Dre but the Sense music player is pretty good, it even comes with a full blown equalizer which results in audio just the way you like it. Overall using Sense 3.5 was a wonderful experience, although TouchWiz is still my favorite Android Skin ,HTC’s latest effort comes in at a very close second. HTC has in short, has fixed everything which was wrong with Sense 3.0.
Performance
As I mentioned before the HTC Rhyme is a very smooth phone, I faced almost no lag whatsoever while using the phone so consider the performance excellent. It scored pretty well in the benchmarks too, in AnTuTu the Rhyme scored an impressive 2709. In CF Bench it did 3935 which is a bit off the previous vanilla Android flagship – Nexus S. The phone scored 1695 in Quadrant which is 400 points more than the Nexus One, which is also running a 1 GHz single processor.
Conclusion
The HTC Rhyme is a very good phone with beautiful hardware and HTC’s best attempt at a propriety Android skin. Initially though of as a lady’s only phone the Rhyme handled me pretty well. If you’re looking for a good looking mid range Android smartphone and do not plan to do major multitasking and gaming, then the HTC Rhyme could be the phone for you.
