Latest news

It appears that the iPhone 5S' new fingerprint scanner is not restricted to just human prints.

TechCrunch put the device to the test and was able to successfully get his cat's paw print to lock and unlock the new smartphone using the Touch ID sensor.

Cats have similar (and unique) identifying prints like humans, so the site says no other cats were able to unlock his phone.

5S users have up to five Touch ID profiles, allowing people that use your phone most frequently to save their prints, as well.

Former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who was also formerly a high-ranking executive within Microsoft, will make $25 million in termination fees if Nokia shareholders agree to sell the handset business to Microsoft.

The software giant will pay $5 billion for the mobile phone division, and $2.17 billion for Nokia's patent trove when the deal is approved. Additionally, Microsoft extended at $1.5 billion loan to Nokia. The company says the transaction will close in the Q1 2014, pending approval by shareholders and regulatory approval.

Elop will make the money immediately alongside an announcement the deal has been approved, as he will also be standing down from his position. Microsoft will pay 68 percent of the fee.

The exec will head back to work at Microsoft after the deal closes, which has had many in the Finnish media calling him "a Trojan horse." Indeed, Nokia's handset business collapsed since he was named CEO and Microsoft was able to purchase the company for cheaper than anyone would have expected even just a few years ago.

Monster, the company behind those extremely overpriced HDMI cables and other accessories has launched their own lineup of tablets.

The devices will be sold exclusively at Walmart and will go on sale later this fall.

A 7-inch model will include an IPS capacitive display at 1280x800 resolution, an unspecified dual-core 1.5GHz SoC and 1GB DDR3 RAM.

The device has 16GB internal storage, a microSD slot, and dual 2MP/5MP cameras. For connectivity there is Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n and GPS.

Monster also notes that the surface is "non-skid" and will come in eight different colors (pictured below).

The tablet will run on a slightly modified Android 4.1. The company did not reveal anything about their 10.1-inch model.

Apple has upped the limit for App Store downloads over data and not Wi-Fi, from 50MB per app to 100MB.

The move comes alongside the rollout of iTunes 11.1 and iOS 7, the latter of which is expected to already have been downloaded on 35 percent of all compatible iOS devices.

Apple most likely expects apps to get 'beefier' as they use the 64-bit processor in the iPhone 5S and updated GPU rendering.

If you are on a 3G/4G network, you will receive an error notice when trying to download an app above 100MB. You will then need to wait until you are on a Wi-Fi network to complete the download.

Apple CEO Tim Cook sat with Bloomberg, and within the interview he discussed Microsoft's recent acquisition of Nokia's handset business.

"Everybody is trying to adopt Apple's strategy," says Cook. "We're not looking for external validation of our strategy, but I think it does suggest that there's a lot of copying, kind of, on the strategy and that people have recognized that importance."

When asked about Nokia, which will still operate under its own name, Cook says the industry needs to read up on the story of the once prominent phone maker. "I think [Nokia] is a reminder to everyone in business that you have to keep innovating and that to not innovate is to die," said Cook.

Before the launch of the iPhone and Android, Nokia controlled as much as 80 percent of the smartphone market with its Symbian operating system. While the company continued to innovate on the design side of the hardware, the software fell behind to the point of no return and eventually the company had to strike a deal with Microsoft for Windows Phone.

When the company unveiled the PlayStation 4 earlier this year, it confirmed that since PS3 discs would not work with the device, gamers would be able to stream their favorite PS3 games using Gaikai, the streaming tech company they acquired in 2012.

Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has now acknowledged that the service will be available to North American gamers early next year, for the PS4, the PS Vita and the new PS Vita TV set-top console.

The processing is taken care of in the cloud, and Sony says the service will launch with a "decent number" of titles.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo, who correctly called the 5C, 5S, fingerprint reader and new colors for the devices, has posted a new research note projecting the sales tally for the first weekend of sales.

The devices, which officially launch on Friday, after a week of pre-orders, has been sold out from most carriers and retailers. There have also been reports that the iPhone 5S has seen supply constraints overseas.

Kuo expects the company to sell between 6 and 8 million combined handsets by the end of the weekend. Even if the low-end of that projection is hit, it would be significantly higher than last year's record-breaking iPhone 5 launch.

The analyst also expects that the iPhone 5s will account for between 35% and 45% of total opening-weekend sales.

Earlier this month, Sony unveiled a new model of their PS Vita handheld.

The new Vita PCH-2000 is 20 percent thinner and 15 percent lighter than the original model while increasing battery life by one hour on average.

Additionally, the new device will be Wi-Fi-only and be a Japanese exclusive for the time being, launching on October 10th. Sony has hinted at potentially sending the handheld elsewhere but so far has not given any notice or confirmation of such a move.

The new Vita will be available in pink, black, blue, grey, lime green, and yellow color options), come with a micro-USB charger rather than Sony's proprietary port, and have 1GB internal storage. To save on costs, Sony has changed the display to an LCD rather than an OLED.

Furthermore, Sony will drop the prices of their memory cards, with the baseline 4GB card dropping to 1,554 yen ($15) and the high-end card, 64GB at 10,479 yen (about $105).

The device will sell for 19800 yen, about $190 USD.

Hulu, revived by its owners with a focus on content, has closed a deal with BBC Worldwide.

The deal will add 144 different BBC titles, including popular and high-rated programs such as Sherlock, Doctor Who and Luther.

Within those titles, there are over 2000 episodes, although a good portion will only be available to Hulu Plus subscribers.

Hulu had recently put itself up for sale, receiving billion dollar bids from Yahoo, DirecTV, and Time Warner, but its owners were not satisfied and instead invested $750 million into their company and new content.

The company will also increase original programming content, in an effort to better compete with Amazon and Netflix, which have been investing hundreds of millions on their own exclusive shows.

Eldar Murtazin, known for leaking Nokia info in the past, has reported that Microsoft is already pushing the company to cancel a few of its upcoming products.

Microsoft recently purchased Nokia's handset unit for over $7 billion and began licensing all of its patents.

Although the deal has not closed (it is expected to do so next year), Murtazin says Microsoft is pushing Nokia to cancel the upcoming Sirius Windows RT tablet, and at least half of the low-end Asha touchscreen music phones.

The software giant will pay $5 billion for the mobile phone division, and $2.17 billion for the patent trove when the deal is approved. Additionally, Microsoft extended at $1.5 billion loan to Nokia. The company says the transaction will close in the Q1 2014, pending approval by shareholders and regulatory approval.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has released its annual customer satisfaction ratings for personal computers, with Apple leading the way for the tenth year running.

ACSI includes traditional computers and tablets in their rating, and Apple finished the year with a satisfaction rating of 87, well above the competition.

The ratings take into account customer expectations, perceptions of quality, and perceptions of value.

Apple must be happy with the result as just last month, ASCI ranked the Galaxy S3 above the iPhone 5 for top smartphone satisfaction.

For the PC ratings, Apple topped the list at 87, followed by HP at 80, Dell at 79, and Toshiba at 78.

Sony Corp revealed an ambitious early goal for the PlayStation 4 console; to sell five million units by the end of its fiscal year.

That would mean that Sony hopes to sell 5 million PS4 consoles worldwide by the end of March 2014. Andrew House, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entrainment (SCEI) revealed the early ambitious goal in Sony's keynote presentation at the Tokyo Game Show today.

Given that the PlayStation 4 (PS4) breaks with Sony tradition by not launching first in its home territory of Japan - which won't get the PS4 until February - the target does seem to be set on the high end. It took Sony almost a full year before the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console sold five million worldwide.

The PS4 doesn't launch in Japan until February 22. It launches in North America on November 15, and in Europe on November 29.

CyanogenMod, the popular custom Android developer has become a real company, Cyanogen Inc., raising $7 million in venture capital funding.

Founder Steve Kondik says the goal of the company is to make Cyanogen one of the most popular smartphone operating systems in the world. To get started on that goal, the company knows it needs to make the process of installing the software easier than it currently is.

Kondik calls the current installation process "hideous," and it does indeed need advanced Android knowledge to install the OS. It also requires root.

To remedy this, Cyanogen Inc. will bring a CM installer to the Google Play store in the next month. Android phone owners will download the app, click one or two buttons and install CM to their device.

CyanogenMod is a stock version of Android, along with streamlined features, additional personalization and added security features. CM also updates the OS regularly, so you will not have to wait for your carrier, or phone maker (HTC, Samsung) to approve and test all OS updates. That process normally takes months after Google releases their latest firmware.

Twitter has updated its apps for iPhone and iPad to coincide with the launch of iOS 7.

Of course, the updates are fully compatible with iOS 6 and iOS 5, but the main reason for the update was for iOS 7 and the new features it brings to Twitter.

In the Music app on an iPhone or iPad running iOS 7, you can now discovery music that's trending on Twitter through the Twitter #music station on iTunes Radio.

Siri on iOS 7 will now also search through Twitter to find tweets about topics or people that you have asked about.

BlackBerry has confirmed the new Z30 smartphone runnign BB 10.2, and featuring some upgrades over the previous BlackBerry Z10.

The new Z30 features a larger 5-inch Super AMOLED display (720p), an upgraded Snapdragon S4 Pro dual core processor at 1.7GHz, 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 320 GPU. Internal storage is also 16GB but can be expanded through the use of a microSD card.

Aiming at business users, BlackBerry has included its new generation of antenna technology that dynamically tunes reception to provide better connectivity in areas of poor signal. The Z30 is also BlackBerry's first smartphone to feature a 2880 mAh battery.

The Z30 is LTE-compatible (no specifics on bands), supports Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC.

Another touted improvement is with sounds; the Z30 features stereo speakers that immerse you in your music, videos, apps and games, and makes conversations sound like you're face-to-face, the Canadian firm claims. BlackBerry Natural Sound is new technology exclusive to BlackBerry and part of BlackBerry 10 OS version 10.2 that makes BBM Voice and BBM Video chats sound more natural and realistic.

Other improvements and features include the BaclBerry Priority Hub which organizes your e-mail, messages and social media data by priority, and also the new in-app message preview that allows you yo respond to a message from any app. However, both these new features come from BlackBerry 10.2, which will be available soon as an update for some older BlackBerry devices.