The new app aims to basically make it easier to find new apps and share them with friends. The description goes:

App Highlights Social Beta offers an exciting new way to discover great apps exclusively for your Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8 device. Browse a wide array of curated collections, create your own app lists, have the community follow your collections, and rise to the top of the leaderboard!

Top Features:
- Enjoy browsing through tons of different apps lists brought to you by Nokia and App Highlights Social Beta users around the world
- While you browse you can thank users for cool app lists
- Sign in to create and share lists of apps with your friends and with the world in order to gain thanks and followers in your lists
- Search for your friends and tech celebrities to start following them and gain insights from their lists of apps

Available free, right over at the Nokia Collection in the Windows Phone Store.

Awesome how technology has made them smaller over the years, eh? The Lumia 925′s camera sensor even has 6 lenses which is one more than the Lumia 920′s sensor, but it’s the same size!

Need more sensor pictures!

Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who steps down today, admitted that Intel missed out on getting their chips into the iPhone. Apple was apparently in talks with the chip-maker about building the iPhone around Intel chips, and even selected a particular component as well. Apple was strict about costs though, and Intel just couldnt make Apple’s desired price.

Otellini admits that in hindsight, they did not realize how popular the iPhone would end up being and how the immense volume of devices would end up being more profitable in the long run.

D’oh?

Well, apparently you needn’t hold your breath about it. When asked about a possible HTC One Nexus Edition, an HTC representative quickly shot down the rumor, stating “HTC is not currently planning a ‘Nexus Edition’ of the HTC One.”

Then again, HTC does have a developer edition of the HTC One already available in select regions, and it features an unlocked bootloader which gives developers room to tweak things. What do you think, should more manufacturers get in on the stock Android experience? Would you buy an HTC One Nexus Edition, or a Nexus Xperia Z?

Ceramic Stereo, is one of Victor’s Concepts that he turned into reality. Inspired by the ‘key bowl‘ most of us have at home where we dump our keys when we get back home, the accessory attempts to be a place for you to set your phone down at the end of a long day:

Inspiration for the object and how it is positioned in the home came from the “key-bowl” – a place where you put your keys when you come home since you have no use for them within the home. Now this isn’t really true when it comes to your phone but with more and more devices that compete for your attention together with the fact that phones are getting larger and larger many people do unload their phone somewhere when they get home.

The observation that led to this concept comes from audio consumption and more specific the mismatch between where content usually resides today (in smartphones) and what is being used to amplify the playback (stereos and speakers)

In a typical audio-playback scenario a clash of interfaces occur. The smartphone that holds the content is connected either via a audio-cable or via wireless technology (usually Bluetooth) to an amplifier. More often than not you get double volume controls, double playback controls and so on. This together with the smartphones already existing interface duality with some functions residing on the screen and some mapped to physical keys makes for a complex interface system.

You place your phone down on one of the three unmarked positions to start one of three actions. The actions being Play Music, Pause, or Internet Radio. The positions are unmarked and only light up when the device is connected (which is triggered by NFC and connects over Bluetooth). The reasoning behind this, is that you only need to look at markings on a stereo a couple times before you memorize it and never usually look again:

Placing your phone on one of the three unmarked positions starts one of the three actions (Play, Pause and Radio). These positions are only visible when powering-up the device and briefly as the action initiates. The reasoning behind not having any marks is that when an interface is this simple and is used by the same people all the time markings outlive their use very quickly and become nothing more than visual clutter.

Gorgeous, eh? Check out the video below for a better idea. Demonstrated with a Nokia Lumia and a Nexus 4:

More information, along with more pictures of how it all came together, right over at Objects And Interactions at the link below. Go on, and let Victor know what you think of his latest project!

In Q1 2013, Windows Phone accounted for 3.2 percent of all smartphones shipped, which is a marginal increase over falling Blackberry shipments which were down to just 2.9 percent. Ironically enough, last quarter Blackberry accounted for 3.2 percent of all smartphone shipments while Windows Phone accounted for 2.6 percent, heh. Good news for Microsoft, for sure, who have been going after the number three spot for a while now.

Not quite the true third smartphone ecosystem yet though, since Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android together made up a huge 92.3 percent of the market, with Android still dominating with 75 percent of all smartphones shipped in Q1. This comes after Google recently announced that there are 900 million Android devices activated currently. iOS marketshare on the other hand, dropped 17.3 percent inspite of Apple having their best quarter ever with 37.4 million iPhones shipped.

Microsoft’s really got to push to get into double digit marketshare me thinks. Hopefully that wont be too far away, eh?

All as an app that has been released for Android, iPhone and iPad.

Hangouts brings one-on-one and group conversations to life with photos, emoji, and video calls for free. Connect with friends across computers, Android and Apple devices. Brought to you by Google.
? Say more with photos and emoji.
? See when people are together in Hangouts, when they’re typing, or whether they’ve seen your message.
? Turn any conversation into a video call with up to 10 friends.
? Message friends anytime, even if they’re not connected right now.
? Use Hangouts on computers, Android and Apple devices.
More Hangouts awesomeness:
? Hangouts stay in sync across devices so you can start or continue them anywhere.
? Choose from hundreds of emoji to help you make your point
? See what you talked about in the past, including shared photos and your video call history.
? Get notifications just once. Once you see an alert, you won’t see repeats on your computer or other Android devices.
? View collections of photos shared from each of your Hangouts.
? Snooze notifications at times when you’d prefer to be undisturbed by alerts.
Notes:
? Unlike Google Talk, Hangouts does not support “invisible” status.

Check out the fun intro video, right below:

I have to say, I really like the new implementation and my Google Talk/Hangout usage has increased tenfold. You now have a main list of conversations, similar to WhatsApp, and the entire new look and feel is very lightweight and SMS-like. The only limitation is that I have a lot of friends using Windows Phones and Asha phones, which as a result will make it hard for me to switch away from Whatsapp entirely.

Still, kudos for the job well done, Google! Available now, right over at the App Store and Google Play Store.

The description goes:

What’s in this version:
Abra-Ca-Bacon! It’s a beautiful spring night, and the bad piggies have learned some magic tricks — and the first one is making the eggs disappear! Not to worry, the Angry Birds have some tricks up their sleeve… like the all new MAGIC PORTALS!
- 36 all new magical levels!
- PORTALS: never-before-seen gameplay that lets you magically transport within the level!
- New power-up: AllakaBAM exploding magic box!

Here’s a fun video introducing the new-ness:

Available right over at the App Store and Google Play Store.

Pretty impressive eh? I wish Nokia would have also included the Lumia 920 on current firmware, so that we could know how much of an improvement it really is. More info over at the Nokia blog post at the link below.

P.S: If you want to see our HTC One vs Nokia Lumia 925 camera comparison video, check it out right below: