Mobile

Today’s Google Doodle is a cute animation celebrating Dr. James Naismith and his invention of basketball in 1891. In 1891, during his tenure as a physical education teacher at the YMCA college in Springfield, Massachusetts, James Naismith — who was not yet a doctor — was called upon to craft a game for his class to play indoors during the bitter cold winter. With less than two weeks to…

A new video published by the YouTube channel Apple Demo this week offers a really interesting look at a prototype version of the iPhone 4S. The video shows the iPhone 4S during the design validation testing phase of its development, with an interesting tie to Steve Jobs’ tenure at Apple. For background, Apple’s hardware development typically moves through stages including EVT (engineering…

The Nest brand has built up a considerable collection of smart home hardware, and starting next year, that hardware is getting a new feature. All Google Nest devices will soon be supported in the Samsung SmartThings app. Starting in January 2021, you’ll be able to link Nest devices to the Samsung SmartThings app with each device being WWST (“Works with SmartThings”) certified. With this…

Mobile payments have become a really useful tool, but they’re still not accepted everywhere. Samsung broke that rule with its clever MST tech that could emulate a traditional card, but with the Galaxy S21, Samsung is done with MST for payments. This really shouldn’t come as any surprise, but it does sting just a bit. Samsung has been moving away from MST for a few years now, stripping the…