Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
ie8 fix

JUICE

Five Android apps that prolong your smartphone's battery life

Have you found yourself wishing that your Android's battery would last longer? Don't answer that, I already know. Be it poor app design, ever-larger display sizes, or our constant desire to play mobile games, we're eating up battery life faster than we'd like.

As a platform, Android has improved with each iteration and task management, and multitasking keeps getting smarter.

With that said, one of the first complaints from new smartphone users is that the battery doesn't seem to live up to expectations. Sure, the 2013 crop of flagship phones seems promising, but not everyone … Read more

Mophie unveils iPhone 5 version of its Juice Pack Air

BARCELONA, Spain--Smartphone accessory maker Mophie may have launched the Juice Pack Helium two weeks back, but the successor to its iPhone 4 and 4S Juice Pack Air case has just been revealed at Pepcom's MobileFocus Global event here at Mobile World Congress.

While the Juice Pack Air looks similar to the Helium, we're told that the Air is slightly heavier (helium floats because its lighter than air). Not that we could tell, both cases felt pretty light in our hands. The Air sports a 1,700mAh battery, and the Helium has a charge of just 1,500mAh. Both … Read more

PayPal's in-store payment partners grow to 23 retailers

Increasingly bringing its service offline, PayPal announced today that it has nearly doubled its brick-and-mortar store lineup to 23 retailers that now accept its payment service.

"Delivering valuable digital and mobile payments is alive and thriving, and consumers all over the U.S. will now start seeing PayPal more where they shop every day, including the grocery store and at the gas pump," PayPal's vice president of retail services Don Kingsborough said in a statement. "No bells, whistles or buzzes -- just technology that works and gets the most from your money."

Throughout the U.… Read more

iPhone 5 estimated to cost 41 cents per year to charge

A new estimate claims Apple's latest iPhone costs 41 cents a year to keep charged, less than a third of its sibling, the iPad.

The metric, put out this week by energy analytics company Opower, is based on the assumption that iPhone owners will recharge their device once a day for the entire year:

Phone 5: consumed 9.5 watt-hours to charge, taking 1 hour and 50 minutes. Maximum wattage was 6.3 watts, with an average of approximately 5.0 W. Multiplying 0.0095 kWh/day by 365 days = 3.47 kWh per year. Annual charging cost is … Read more

Mophie gets tough with Juice Pack Pro iPhone 4/4S case

Think of Mophie's new Juice Pack Pro as an Otterbox case that's packing a 2,500 mAh battery that more than doubles the battery life of your iPhone 4 or 4S.

Mophie would probably argue that the Juice Pack Pro is actually tougher than an Otterbox case. It's touting its first ruggedized battery pack case as exceeding military specification MIL-STD 810G, which is pretty tough.

That said, the case is water-resistant but not totally waterproof (it can't go underwater). It has a built-in screen protector and comes with a rotating belt clip. According to Mophie, that … Read more

Europe to explore Jupiter's icy moons

The European Space Agency will launch a probe to Jupiter and its icy moons in the search of habitable zones and a better understanding of our outer solar system.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, is scheduled to launch in 2022 and arrive at Jupiter eight years later to explore Jupiter and its moons for at least three years.

Jupiter's icy moons, Europa and Ganymede, are of great interest to space explorers because they are thought to have the conditions for life to form.

Ganymede, in particular, is an interesting subject to scientists because it is a water … Read more

iPhone case, wall charger combo arriving sooner than planned

The Kickstarter project called JuiceTank that promises to combine a mobile phone charger and a case in one tidy package will be ready sooner than originally estimated, according to its creators.

Today, Detached -- the company behind the JuiceTank -- said it was "in the final stages of development" and that the tooling segment of production was ahead of schedule.

The peculiar hybrid, which was unveiled last month on idea incubator Kickstarter, differs from the bevy of cases with built-in charging features. Instead of including a built-in battery to augment runtime, it has an integrated wall plug that lets you plug your iPhone 4/4S directly into an outlet, eliminating the need to use a USB-based charger. … Read more

The 404 1,011: Where we go bump in the night (podcast)

The iPad reviews are in, and today we'll take a closer study of the common complaints made by tech pundits around the Web. Collective criticisms run from the lack of FaceTime over LTE to longer charging time and juice for the larger battery to a 7 percent thickness increase over the previous model.

It's not all about Apple, though. We'll also tell you about how a home-energy monitoring Android app helped a father bust his teenage daughter's secret Project-X house party, show off a laser un-printer that could help save the trees, and examine a Kickstarter campaign to fund an iPhone case with a built-in wall plug!… Read more

Hardware makers ally with BitTorrent for European, Asian invasions

LAS VEGAS--A phalanx of deals involving the commanding general of torrent protocols, BitTorrent, and next-generation hardware marched into CES 2012 today, the unofficial Day Zero of the show. BitTorrent also announced that more than 150 million people used sibling programs BitTorrent and uTorrent last month, making them by far the most popular torrent clients around.

Following up on the announcement from CES 2011 that it would partner with hardware manufacturers to ship their devices with torrent support built in, BitTorrent revealed four companies based in Europe, Russia, and Asia that have prepared new hardware that automatically works with the current BitTorrent program. BitTorrent-certified devices from these companies will carry the BitTorrent logo. … Read more