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Samsung has revealed its new Tizen-based Z3 smartphone, the second phone to use the fledgling operating system.

The Z3 will be available in India and will feature some nice upgrades from the really low-cost Z1 released in January.

Samsung says the new phone will have a 720p 5-inch display, a 1.3GHz quad-core processor built by Spreadtrum, 1GB RAM, a 2600mAh battery, dual 8MP/5MP cameras and a metal-looking design. Unfortunately, there is no LTE support, but it does support HSPA+.

Priced at 8490 Rand, or about $130 USD, the device is cheap but still won't be as cheap as other phones being released in India.

Google has announced today that it is retiring its annoying Chrome notification center from upcoming Chrome versions for Windows, Mac and Linux. ChromeOS users will still have it, but it is much more important for them.

The search giant says "in practice, few users visit the notification center," suggesting it had just become bloat.

Chrome's desktop notification center debuted in 2013 to give users a way to catch up on their info even when Chrome was closed.

Most dedicated Chrome users immediately shut down the annoying notifications, however, as the center notably took up even more RAM than Chrome's normally extremely high usage.

If the news excites you, Chrome's next update, 47, will hit at the end of November.

Source:
Google

Last week, Microsoft surprised fans by revealing a gorgeous new reference notebook, the Surface Book.

It seems that Microsoft's new laptop has some serious fans, as all models have sold out in Microsoft's pre-order period. That is certainly interesting since the notebook retails for $1499 to $2899, in-line with the MacBook Pro, which is generally considered very expensive.

Of course, selling out does not suggest how much inventory Microsoft had to begin with, but as always, selling out is surely the preferred route for any company.

The Surface Book is set for release on October 26th.

Uber has officially launched its UberRUSH delivery service in NYC, Chicago and San Francisco, following a pilot program in New York for the last year.

RUSH allows users to receive on-demand deliveries from local businesses, similar to existing services like Postmates. If you live in those cities you will see an UberRUSH icon within your app that lets you order a courier.

Jason Droege, head of UberEVERYTHING, says the service has been integrated with most of the top e-commerce platforms, which will help increase how many companies can utilize the service.

Just three days after launching in alpha this weekend, music streaming service Aurous and its lead developer Andrew Sampson have been sued by the major record labels.

What is Aurous? The service is an internal database of links to content, collected via 120 public APIs that Sampson has integrated into the app, and the search results are then delivered to end users via the BitTorrent protocol. For this reason the service has been called the "Popcorn Time" of streaming music, although Sampson has said he does not agree. He calls the app a "player of players" allowing you to take all your services and put them in one place.

Doesn't matter now as the three majors, UMG, Sony Music and WMG (as well as subsidiaries Atlantic and Capitol) have filed sued against the app. "This service is a flagrant example of a business model powered by copyright theft on a massive scale," industry watchdog RIAA said. "Like Grokster, Limewire or Grooveshark, it is neither licensed nor legal. We will not allow such a service to willfully trample the rights of music creators."

The lawsuit has two main complaints. First, that Aurous pulls music from "websites offering vast collections of pirated copies of popular recorded music," most of which are located overseas, and second that Aurous lets users stream directly from BitTorrent, which has long been the bane of the label's existence.

Chinese smartphone OEM OnePlus has teased a new event on October 29th where the company will reveal their OnePlus X handset.

Co-founder Carl Pei said back in August that OnePlus would release a second phone before the end of the year, following the recent release of the OnePlus Two.

There have been a few minor leaks of late for the new X, including the North American FCC filing that shows off a 5.5-inch display with a metal frame and a micro-USB port.

The OnePlus X will likely be the cheaper of the company's two new devices, which likely means a $199 price tag, unlocked.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen has said this week that the company needs to sell 5 million smartphones a year to have their handset division be profitable, and if they can't hit that target the smartphone maker may have to stop building hardware altogether.

Last quarter, BlackBerry sold 800,000 units but that number is expected to jump as the company recently announced the Priv, their first phone to run on Android rather than BlackBerry's own software. The Priv has a sliding touchscreen that reveals a full QWERTY keyboard and also has security tech built in that the company says is better than Samsung's leading Knox suite.

Chen did note that BlackBerry 10 is not dead, but that their only customers are governments and corporations that do not upgrade quickly so we may not see BB10 devices for another year or two.

Perhaps most importantly for BlackBerry is the fact that carriers will actually have the Priv in stores, a nice change from past years where it was almost impossible to find a BalckBerry device even if you (for some reason) wanted one.

Hulu announced earlier this week that it had expanded its relationship with Viacom, adding more classic kids titles and bringing back hits like 'The Daily Show' now with new host Trevor Noah.

A few of the 90's hits include "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "Rugrats" and "Doug," and the deal will expand the amount of episodes available of contemporary comedies like "Broad City," "Drunk History," and "Inside Amy Schumer."

Of note, 'The Daily Show' is also back, giving users access to new episodes the day after they air.

According to Re/code, new Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is preparing to make company-wide layoffs this week, his first major decision since being named permanently to the position.

If true, the downsizing will affect all divisions of the struggling company that currently has over 4000 employees. The report also claims that many of the layoffs will be of engineers, which are currently about half of all employees.

At the same time, Twitter is restructuring its entire organization to be more "lean" and efficient.

Dorsey, a co-founder of the service, has been interim CEO since longtime exec Dick Costolo was let go earlier this year.

Google Senior VP of Search Amit Singhal has revealed some interesting facts about the world's leading search engine. According to Singhai now more than half of Google searches are done on mobile devices.

Ever since it's inception around the turn of the millenium Google's search has been used predominantly on PCs. Desktop computers have been losing their grip to mobile computing for years now and now they've finally overtaken all other forms of searching combined.

Speaking at the Recode's Code Mobile conference Singhal said that mobile devices with a smaller than six inch screen account for more than 50 percent of the 100 billion montly searches. In many of the developed countries the scale had already tipped on mobile devices favor earlier but now it did so internationally as well.

It's worth to note that most of the devices one would call tablets (and mobile as well) aren't calculated in the mobile devices here since they rarely have small enough screen.

Sony has dropped the price of their popular PlayStation 4 console today, down to $349.99 in the U.S. and to $429.99 CAD in Canada.

"Our goal at PlayStation has always been to provide the best gameplay experiences at the best value, and we feel this new compelling price will open the doors to even more gamers that have yet to purchase a system," added Sony.

In addition to the console being marked down, some bundles also saw a price cut.

The UNCHARTED: The Nathan Drake Collection PS4 Bundle is down to $349.99 USD / $429.99 CAD; the Limited Edition Call of Duty: Black Ops III 1TB PS4 Bundle (set for release 11/6) is reduced to $429.99 USD / $499.99 CAD; the limited Edition Disney Infinity 3.0: Star Wars PS4 Bundle (release 11/13) is down to $399.99 USD / $469.99 CAD, the limited Edition Star Wars Battlefront PS4 Bundle (release 11/17) is priced down to $399.99 USD / $469.99 CAD; the Star Wars Battlefront PS4 Bundle (release 11/17) is down to $349.99 USD / $429.99 CAD; and the NHL 16 PS4 Bundle is reduced in Canada to $429.99 CAD.

Netflix will be raising the price of their standard streaming subscription plan from the current $8.99 to $9.99 as the company continues to add original content.

The change is effective in the U.S., Canada and some countries in Latin America for new customers and will be effective in a year for existing customers.

Netflix offers a few tiers but the standard plan is the most popular since it allows two simultaneous HD streams at a time.

"To continue adding more TV shows and movies including many Netflix original titles, we are modestly raising the price for some new members in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. As a thank you to existing Netflix members -- who aren't already benefiting from a previous price guarantee -- we will maintain their current price for a year," said the company.

The move is unsurprising given the fact that Europe already saw a similar price increase two months ago from €8.99 to €9.99.

The fitness tracker is now smarter, sleeker and slimmer.

Microsoft announced the second-generation Microsoft Band fitness tracker this week, a wearable with a curved, touchscreen OLED display that also includes Cortana integration.

The tracker offers GPS, heart rate tracking, calorie tracking, sleep tracking, has a barometer for hiking/stairs, and it will even guide you through workouts. Cortana will yell at you if you forget to workout, as well.

Additionally, the Band records serious athletic metrics like VO2 max, has shot detection for golfers and supports popular apps like Uber, RunKeeper, Starbucks, Subway and Twitter which makes it pretty versatile.

Band works with iOS, Android and Windows Phone and will cost $249, more expensive than last year's model, which is generally considered a flop.

Yesterday, during Microsoft's big event, one smaller piece of news hit that went generally unnoticed but also means big things for Microsoft.

The company has a long stated goal of having developers create universal apps that can run seamlessly across phones, PCs and tablets, but so far there have been very, very few built.

Now, Microsoft has a big developer backing their push for universal apps, with Facebook having created universal apps for Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. "Facebook is all in on Windows 10," read the quote by Mark Zuckerberg.

Instagram is a big deal since there has been only minor updates to the app for Windows Phone over the last two years and the app still doesn't have the ability to upload video.

Microsoft surprised nearly everyone yesterday with the announcement of a new laptop, the Surface Book.

The high-end device appears to be taking on the MacBook Pro and the Google Pixel C, in looks and in its ability to showcase its parent's operating system.

To get started, the Surface Book has a 13.5" PixelSense display with 3000 x 2000 resolution and 10 point multi-touch and the whole case is magnesium for a nice metallic look.

The laptop is powered by a 6th-Gen Skylake Intel Core i5 or i7 and either Intel HD graphics 520 or a NVIDIA GeForce Graphics Processor and 8GB or 16GB of RAM. The Surface Book comes with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB or SSD storage. Since the laptop is a 2-in-1 it also has dual cameras, 8MP/5MP, dual speakers and dual mics.

Extremely interesting is the hinge the laptop uses, which allows for the keyboard to be bent completely backwards if need be, for drawing, for example, or completely detached.

The laptop is 3.34 lbs and starts at $1499, giving it a premium price in-line with the Macbook Pro.