If you’ve been contemplating the switch to iOS or just want to upgrade your current iPhone, this may be the weekend to do so. Best Buy is planning to slash iPhone prices by $50 in a four-week promotion that begins on Sunday.
To get this discount, you’ll need to purchase an iPhone 4, iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 and agree to a two-year contract with either Verizon, Sprint or AT&T. But this isn’t the only smartphone sale the electronics retailer has planned for the holiday weekend. From May 26 through June 1, Best Buy will be selling the Galaxy S3 for $49 for AT&T and Sprint subscribers. This is a $50 price cut from its original cost.
The average American child receives $15 per week in allowance, whether it’s through a debit card, cold hard cash or an iTunes account. That adds up to $780 per year, which is far from chump change for most families, but the benefits for teaching children about money can be worth it if they spend it wisely. So how you manage that money? Apps might be the answer for some.
The primary benefit of getting an allowance is “an understanding of financial responsibility,” Hilary DeCesare, a digital parenting expert and cofounder/CEO of Everloop, an online social media network for kids under 13, said. “An allowance will teach [kids] to manage their own accounts and budget their spending. It is a need vs. want situation, and kids need to understand the difference.”
DeCesare believes, like many others, that parents should monitor how their children are spending their allowance, especially when they’re younger, to instill a sense of financial responsibility. While in the past parents might collect receipts to do this and review on a regular basis, the digital age has allowed a slew of apps to replace the paper. These apps let kids log exactly what they purchase and how much they spend, which the parents have access to and can discuss with their child. But do they work as they should?
Walmart is adding two more budget tablets to its lineup, one of which features Nvidia’s graphics-focused processing power. Hisense’s new aggressively-priced Sero 7 LT and Sero 7 Pro are available in Walmart retail locations and on Walmart.com beginning today.
The $99 7-inch Sero LT comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, a 1.6GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a low-res 1024 x 600 display. The Pro model, however, boasts Nvidia’s 1.3-GHz Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, a sharper 1,280 x 800 display, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera and a 5-megapixel rear shooter. This Sero 7 Pro slate sells for an aggressive $149.
At Google I/O we learned that a stock Android version of the Galaxy S4 is coming, and now HTC may follow suit. Rumors suggest that HTC has a build in its pipeline for an HTC One running the standard version of Android 4.2.2 without HTC’s Sense skin.
The news comes from Geek.com’s Russell Holly, who claims that “multiple sources” are saying that HTC has plans to launch a stripped-down version of its flagship handset. It’s unclear if this stock Android One would be sold through the Google Play Store or through HTC, but sources allegedly say that it will become available in the US first.
It’s not rocket science: Texting while driving is dumb, not to mention dangerous. Yet we still do it, especially teenagers who as new drivers should be taking extra precautions. According to an AT&T commuter survey, 49 percent of commuters admitted to texting while driving. But the statistics don’t lie. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute Research says that those who text and drive are 23 times more likely to be in a crash. Apparently the temptation to constantly be in touch with loved ones outweighs the desire to stay safe.
But even cellphone carriers have banded together to stop texting and driving, all uniting behind AT&T’s “It Can Wait” campaign. All of the Big Four carriers are backing the multi-million dollar campaign, all the while acknowledging that the products they put out can indeed be dangerous. Plus, three out of the Big Four have their own apps to curb texting while driving. (T-Mobile did have its own app, DriveSmart, but it discontinued. A T-Mobile spokesperson said, “DriveSmart was a great idea, but we found there were others in the software developer ecosystem who were offering better solutions that we could.”)
Luckily there are a slew of apps out there to make it easier for you to avoid texting while driving. However, it’s worth noting that only one of these apps is supported in Apple’s App Store, so parents may want to reconsider getting their newly driving teenager an iPhone. From safety apps by carriers to apps that let you respond to texts using voice to apps that block your phone from receiving messages while your car is in motion, these apps protect you from yourself.
AT&T gives its customers a way to avoid texting distractions while driving with its AT&T DriveMode app. You can set up auto-replies that are sent to incoming texts, emails and calls, then when you're driving you don't have to worry about responding to anything that comes to your mobile device.
Notification sounds are silenced when you're on the road, and you don't even have the option to read or compose texts or emails. However, DriveMode does let you make or receive calls for up to five people, and you can always call 911. Plus, you can access one music and navigation app while you're driving.
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Not a fan of watching your iPhone slip off the dashboard onto the floor while you’re driving? The Nite Ize Steelie car mount kit is ready to keep your iPhone secure. Using strong a strong magnet you apply to the back of your device and a little steel ball you apply to your dash, you can use your iPhone in portrait or landscape mode with ease.
Here at CTIA 2013, Nite Ize showed us how this $34.99 accessory works, as well as its $39.99 HobNob Kit and $59.99 pedestal kit.
The car kit installs easily enough, but the magnet on the back of the iPhone protrudes a bit. The good news is that you can attach the magnet to a case, like an Otterbox. And the company is working to create its own case with a magnet that’s flush with the design.
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Few things are more inconvenient than receiving a phone call at a time when you can’t answer it. Declining the call without a response is rude, and sending a text can take too long. But TIP Solutions wants to make declining calls a lot easier and a bit more fun with its new Call Snap app. The software, which is available for free through the Google Play store , lets you send a photo of your surroundings to any caller to let them know exactly why you can’t talk right this second.
Call Snap works by augmenting your Android smartphone’s dialer and adding a Call Snap slider. When you get a call, you simply swipe the slider to the left to open Call Snap. Once open, the app starts your phone’s camera and lets you snap an image of your surroundings. You can then add text if you want to give the photo some context and send it away.
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There are speakers that can get splashed, and then there are speakers that you can literally poor water on. And run over with a Hummer. And shoot with a gun. Braven says it’s BRV-1 speaker can survive all of the above, and here at CTIA 2013 we literally had a blast watching the company torture test its accessory.
The BR-V1 launched in February, but Braven says the price will likely drop from $179 to $150 in time for summer. And this is a speaker that’s definitely ready for the outdoors. To show the BR-V1 IPX5 water resistance, the company doused the device with a pitcher. The speaker proceeded to spit the water out to the beat, taking only a few seconds to go back to maximum volume.
There are gadgets that change everything (the iPhone, the first Intel Centrino laptops, Bose’s noise-canceling headphones), and then there are devices that are so spectacularly bad that they should be immortalized in their own way. The last few decades have seen all kinds of flops, from a not-so-world-changing scooter to Nokia’s attempt to beat Nintendo and Sony at their own game.
More recently, we’ve seen a smartphone that’s likely the fastest to go from $99 to 99 cents and a Death Star-like media player that doesn’t do much other than look menacing. To make our list of all-time gadget flops, the product had to do more than fail to execute. It had to have serious hype behind it—enough to help make that crash and burn all the more satisfying. Here are our Top 25 Worst Gadget Flops of All Time.
Other than the original iPhone, very few gadgets in history were hyped this much before launch. Dean Kamen's Project Ginger had all sorts of praise heaped upon it by those who previewed the new-age scooter. Here's what Steve Jobs reportedly said about the Segway in a book proposal: “If enough people see the machine you won’t have to convince them to architect cities around it. It’ll just happen.” Oops.
Priced at a staggering $5,000, the Segway didn't even come close to living up to its expectations. Sure, it was nifty that the Segway was self-balancing, but that wasn't nearly enough to overcome the sticker shock or the sheer geek factor of this vehicle. The final insult came when President Bush fell of a Segway in 2004. Today, you'll see these scooters ridden by some police officers and postal workers, but that's pretty much it.
Looking for a powerful tablet, but don’t want to break the bank? Hisense, a Chinese electronics company, might have just what you’re looking for. The company entering the budget tablet market announcing a pair of aggressively priced 7-inch tablets with prices starting at just $99.
"Hi Joe
Thanks for your comment. The reason most of the gadgets on this list are more recent is because we focused on mobile gadgets, which is what we focus on in terms of coverage." -- Mark Spoonauer, LAPTOP Editor in Chief on 25 Worst Gadget Flops of All Time
May 24, 2013 01:42 PM EDT by 
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