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Search giant Google is now facing another antitrust complaint in the EU, this time from mobile app marketplace (app store) company Aptoide.

The Portuguese company claims that Google has abused its market leading position in the smartphone market to steer consumers away from any app store that isn't their own Google Play Store.

"We are struggling to grow, even to survive, in the face of Google systematically setting up obstacles for users to install third-party app stores in the Android platform and blocking competition in their Google Play store," said Paulo Trezentos, Aptoide's co-founder and CEO.

Trezentos says the app store has six million unique monthly users and that the company will team together with other independent app stores to forge a common front" against Google.

The European Commission did not confirm they had received the complaint, which Aptoide filed last week.

Google is already facing a large antitrust complaint from Nokia, Microsoft and 13 other companies which had accused the search giant of using Android to promote Google's own apps.

DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has claimed that YouTube will be the dominant platform for media consumption in the next five years, displacing the current traditional TV behemoths.

Katzenberg added that YouTube is a great way to discover new talent and that more companies should be investing, as soon as possible.

"It gives a platform or voice for all kinds of creators to be able to express themselves and tell stories," Katzenberg added. "The barrier of entry into the business is lower than ever before and that is a great thing."

The executive then discussed the future of mobile and video sharing, especially as compared to the current movie theater and TV experience. "I love movie theatres and making movies for the big screen but these little devices have sharabilty, snackabilty and connectivity. It is so completely unique; we are still at the beginning of the beginning of this evolution. Mobile content provides a much more personal experience in that you learn about people and follow them and become a fan... you become a friend.

"There is a much deeper connection in this world of blogging and short form content that is becoming a little bit of a cliché but you are leaning into that experience instead of sitting back."

According to a new report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), DSL subscribers are not getting their advertised speeds, especially not during peak hours.

Cable, fiber and satellite customers, on the other hand, are actually getting faster speeds than what their ISP has advertised, a pleasant surprise. The FCC report claims that DSL customers are getting download speeds at just 91 percent of the advertised speeds during peak hours.

Fiber customer's speeds were at 113 percent of advertised speeds, cable customers saw speeds at 102 percent and satellite customers saw a ridiculous 138 percent of advertised speed, begging the question of why the advertised speeds are so low.

On average, DSL speeds came in at 97 percent of advertised speeds, but that's not enough.

"Consumers deserve to get what they pay for," chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement. "While it's encouraging to see that in the past these reports have encouraged providers to improve their services, I'm concerned that some providers are failing to deliver consistent speeds to consumers that are commensurate to their advertised speeds."

Any company found to not be delivering the advertised speeds will be receiving warning letters from the FCC in the near future.

Earlier today, Amazon unveiled its first smartphone, the Fire Phone.

The company has long been rumored to be building their first device, dubbed the "3D phone" and they did not disappoint today, showing off a phone with mid-range specs but a plethora of intriguing software and hardware features.

Unfortunately and stupidly, the company decided to stick all of its eggs in one basket, making the device an AT&T exclusive and locking out 180 million Americans.

Hardware

On the hardware side, the Fire Phone features a 4.7" HD LCD display, with 1280 x 720 resolution at 315 ppi, and under the hood is a 2.2GHz Quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, with Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB of RAM. At 5.6 ounces, the device is relatively heavy, and the design is plain but features both metal and rubber.

The smartphone has a 2.1MP front camera, a 13 MP rear-facing camera with multi-frame HDR, auto focus, optical image stabilization, f/2.0 5-element wide aperture lens, LED flash and four other cameras on the front for 3D. The base model has 32GB internal storage, the phone runs on Amazon's own FireOS 3.5 and offers unlimited free Amazon cloud storage for extended storage.

T-Mobile US continues to go for the jugular of the U.S. wireless industry, introducing unlimited music streaming that will not go against your data cap.

'Simple Choice' plan customers will be able to stream music from Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker and others without impacting their data caps, a really big deal as streaming services can eat into a 2-3GB data plan in quick order.

In addition, the carrier introduced its own streaming service called 'unRadio' that offer ad-free streaming Internet radio powered by Rhapsody. Users can skip an unlimited amount of tracks and can even download 25 songs for offline playback.

If you have an unlimited data plan with the carrier, unRadio is free. Otherwise it's $4 per month. "It's designed to be a better Internet radio," T-Mobile CEO John Legere added. The service also comes with a Shazam clone built-in, for those times you want to search a song.

Speaking today during the carrier's "Uncarrier 5.0" event, T-Mobile US CEO John Legere has announced a new plan that will let consumers test an iPhone 5S for free for a week.

As part of their "Test Drive," new users to T-Mobile get unlimited 4G LTE data and a free phone for a week. If you do not like the network, you can cancel at no cost.

Of course, you will have to give T-Mobile your credit card number before the trial starts so if you decide to keep the phone or destroy it, the carrier will charge you $700.

Reads the press release:

To kick off Un-carrier 5.0, T-Mobile today introduced "T-Mobile Test Drive" and pioneered a new way to buy wireless in the U.S. With T-Mobile Test Drive, anyone can get an iPhone 5s and unlimited nationwide service to take T-Mobile's network for a data-intensive, seven-day spin at no cost.

Starting June 23, people can sign up for T-Mobile Test Drive at www.t-mobile.com/testdrive. A few days later, they'll receive an iPhone 5s and they can put T-Mobile's data-strong network to the test for seven full days.

Samsung has unwrapped a gift for the Korean market, the oft-rumored Galaxy S5 LTE-A (Galaxy Prime) with much improved specs from the recently released international S5 model.

The new model offers support for the ridiculously fast data speeds of LTE-Advanced (as high as 225Mbps) but also packs a redone interior that easily blasts away the international S5 model.

Under the hood is a 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB RAM, a 16MP camera, 2,800mAh battery. The device is waterproof and dustrproof (IP67) and most importantly, has a QHD Super AMOLED display (2560×1440), a nice improvement from the 1080p display and Snapdragon 801 processor of the standard S5.

It is very unlikely that the Android KitKat device will ever make it to the U.S. (or anywhere outside of Korea) but we can dream.

Following E3, Microsoft was bombarded by questions about their June XDK (Xbox Development Kit) update, most notably about how it affects Kinect and the "horsepower" of the console.

In fact, Microsoft had so many questions that it decided to post a new blog entry answering the most asked questions. Kareem Choudhry, the Director of Development, Xbox Software Engineering was put on the hot seat.

Full text here:

Apple has reached a settlement with U.S. state governments and consumers who were seeking damages over the company's price fixing of ebooks.

The tech giant will avoid trial and has settled just like all the publishers it conspired with to raise prices. Apple had been facing over $800 million in claims if it had let the case go to trial.

Details for the agreement were not disclosed but Apple must submit a filing to seek approval within the month.

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple and five of the largest book publishers claiming that the companies conspired to break Amazon's dominance of the ebook market and its wholesale pricing. At the time, Amazon would buy the rights to the books at wholesale prices and then priced them at whatever they chose, often times underpricing hit books to get traffic to their site and get more people to buy the Kindle hardware. Apple, who was launching its own bookstore with the launch of the iPad, changed the game to the "agency model" in which Apple sells the books at the prices dictated by the publisher but takes a 30 percent cut. This pushed the average price of ebooks from $9.99 to $12-14 or even higher in many cases.

The European Union and South Korea have teamed up to develop future '5G' mobile wireless networks, which will be the fastest on the planet.

As part of the deal, a new joint group will be created to set standards, and get radio frequencies ready for the new networks.

The overall goal is to have a "global consensus and vision" on '5G' by the end of next year.

According to EU data, 5G speeds would be significantly higher than the current 4G standards with users able to download a one-hour HD video in just six seconds. Huawei of China has already set aside $600 million through 2018 for R&D on 5G, and universities in the U.S. are also researching the standard.

South Korea is certainly a good partner for the EU in the 5G race. The country's mobile-penetration rate is over 100 percent, meaning there is over one mobile device in use for every person in the nation. The nation also has the fastest broadband speeds for home users.

The Nest Protect, the company's smoke and carbon monoxide detector, is back in stores following a two month recall over safety concerns about a specific feature.

In addition, the Protect will return with a price cut - down to $99 from the original $130.

Nest Labs (now owned by Google) had recalled about 440,000 of its smoke detectors, due to safety concerns about the Nest Wave feature. "Nest Wave" had let users silence alerts temporarily just by waving their arms. The feature has been remotely disabled via a new mandatory OTA update.

The feature has not been fixed as of yet, and will be turned back on when all safety concerns are satisfied.

E-commerce giant Amazon is expected to unveil its long-awaited 3D smartphone tomorrow at a new product launch event.

According to a new report, the smartphone will be an AT&T exclusive, which would double the already huge marketing potential for the device and extend Amazon's relationship with the major U.S. carrier. AT&T currently offers the 3G service for Amazon's Kindle devices.

The new smartphone will be different from other devices due to its multiple front-side sensors that allow for eye movement tracking, extended gestures and 3D images and gaming.

Developers who have used prototypes of the smartphone have been unclear how to use the eye-tracking software in their apps, so it is unclear what the "killer" apps will be when Amazon unveils the device. The smartphone is also expected to use the Fire OS operating system available on Amazon's other devices, which has the curated Amazon Appstore rather than the full Android Google Play Store.

As with Amazon's past hardware, the company is likely to sell the device at cost, looking to make profits on the Amazon ecosystem of Prime, music, movies, books, and of course, shopping.

George Hotz (aka geohot) is back with a vengeance, releasing a new root tool that can be effectively used on all Android devices including the "unrootable" Samsung Galaxy S5 for Verizon and AT&T.

Geohot became famous for being the first person to unlock the original iPhone, and later for creating the limera1n jailbreak tool for future versions of the iPhone. The hacker then gained notoriety when he exploited OtherOS for the Sony PlayStation 3, opening up the ability to add homebrew (and play pirated games), causing Sony to disable the feature entirely and sue the young hacker.

Gaining root access to an Android device allows users to make system-level changes, and gain great apps like Titanium Backup. You can also flash different ROMs, like CyanogenMod, if you just hate the bloat of your Samsung, LG or HTC device.

BlackBerry has announced the launch of their first eBBM product, a suite that includes a specialized BBM instant messenger service for enterprise users.

The company says the suite includes BBM Protected, which is FIPS 140-2 cryptographic library-enabled messaging. The service can be used between users within the same enterprise, or with other companies who are also using BBM Protected.

While it may seem like a niche product, there are likely plenty of corporations who require secure communications, including defense contractors, attorney firms and even investment banks. BlackBerry still has a large government customer base, even as other industries move to iOS and Android.

Currently, the BBM Protected product works on BB OS 6.0 or newer, and on BlackBerry 10 in "Regulated Mode." Later this year, BlackBerry 10 users with BlackBerry Balance will be able to switch between business and pleasure, and iOS and Android BBM users will receive BBM Protected later this year, as well.

Google has revealed the first "Glass At Work" partners, pushing forward with the wearable device featuring apps designed for businesses.

The search giant unveiled the first Certified Partners, authorized companies that were selected to develop enterprise solutions for Glass devices. For their part, the companies can also co-brand and will be listed on the Glass at Work website.

A couple of hundred of developers applied for the program, and Google seems to have selected a broad spectrum of industries. The initial partners include APX, Augmedix, Crowdoptic, GuidiGO, and Wearable Intelligence.

APX makes Skylight, a software platform that companies use to create smart glasses applications. AugMedix has a Google Glass app for doctors. The app enters electronic health-record data while doctors treat patients. CrowdOptic has context-aware apps for the sports industry. GuidiGo offers an update to the classic museum audio tour by offering a more immersive Glass version. Wearable Intelligence builds workflow, training and communications apps.