Samsung unveiled its flagship smartphone for 2012 during an action-packed, occasionally bizarre press conference held in London on Thursday. The device has some big shoes to fill considering the success of the Galaxy S II and all its variants, so a spectacular Unpacked event was in order. The South Korea-based vendor tried to stream the event live on its Facebook page, but many eager onlookers reported difficulties when they tried to load Samsung’s video player. For those who were unable to watch the event live, or for those who just want to relive the magic, a re-broadcast of Samsung’s Unpacked 2012 event is now available, and it can be watched below in its entirety.

Electronic Arts and Crytek announced the highly anticipated next installment of the Crysis franchise earlier this week, and the companies have now released the first Crysis 3 teaser that includes gameplay footage. Albeit brief, the teaser reel showcases a new weapon and stunning graphics that will definitely pique gamers’ interest. ”Crysis 3 is a thrilling mix of sandbox gameplay, advanced combat and hi-tech human and alien weaponry that shooter fans will love,” Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli said in a statement. “Leveraging the latest CryENGINE technology, we’re able to deliver seven unique themes that offer stunning and visually loaded gameplay experiences. We cannot wait until people get their hands on the game.” The first full trailer for Crysis 3 will be released on April 24th, and Crysis 3 Hunter Edition is already available for pre-order ahead of its release in 2013. The full teaser video can be viewed below.

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New images and video of the unannounced next-generation Galaxy S smartphone were published on Friday morning. The source, Vietnamese blog Tinhte, has a solid track record of publishing images, videos and other details surrounding unreleased devices, and the smartphone shown off by the blog is believed to be authentic. In an interesting twist, however, this may not be the Galaxy S III we see announced on May 3rd during Samsung’s “Unpacked” event in London. Read on for more.

The smartphone pictured carries the model number i9300, which a trusted BGR source has confirmed belongs to the next-generation Galaxy S smartphone. According to Tinhte, the phone features a quad-core 1.4GHz processor, a 4.6-inch 720p HD display, Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich, 16GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera, NFC and a 2,050 mAh battery. These specs vary in several instances with the numerous details reported earlier by BGR, and Tinhte may have the explanation why.

According to the blog, this device is likely close to the final version of the phone, however Samsung has taken measures to prevent the finished design from leaking ahead of the vendor’s upcoming announcement. Loosely translated from Tinhte’s post, which has since been removed, ”Samsung has used a fake outer shell designed to ensure the machine is not exposed until it is unveiled.” The blog’s video has vanished along with its original post, however Engadget managed to download a copy that is still available on its site.

The launch version is expected to appear in a ceramic and metal or metal-look case, and two color options will be blue and white. BGR has also been told that there will be 16GB and 32GB models available at launch, and Samsung is planning a massive marketing blitz that will see the Galaxy S III become the official handset of the 2012 Olympic Summer Games.

Several additional images of the incognito Galaxy S III can be viewed below.

[Via Gizmodo]

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Devices like Apple’s iPad have shown the world that huge advances have been made in mobile gaming over the past few years. Featuring the Apple A5X processor with quad-core graphics, the third-generation iPad takes mobile video games to new heights on iOS devices, but technology blogs and the media tend to get a bit carried away in terms of comparisons between console gaming and mobile gaming. Gameplay itself paints an obvious picture, and the numbers do as well; Microsoft’s seven-year-old Xbox 360 console features floating-point performance of 240 Gflops and 500 million triangles while Apple’s brand new iPad is rated at a maximum of 7.2 Gflops and 35 million triangles.

The next-generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles currently being developed by Microsoft and Sony will make the disparity between these two classes of gaming even more vast, adding more fluid animation support and a number of additional enhancements that will make video games more realistic than ever. But even when confined to the capabilities present in today’s home consoles and PCs, new video game engines show us just how amazing gaming will be moving forward.

Ctytek, the lab behind the popular Crysis franchise, recently released the CryENGINE 3 SDK 3.4.0 DX11 update for developers as well as with a quick reel to highlight some of the engine’s capabilities. Along with companies like Epic Games, Crytek continues to push the envelope while enabling other developers to do the same, and this latest release will set the bar even higher. Crytek’s video trailer follows below.

Apple’s iPad and the conditions under which it is built are topics that surface regularly on technology blogs and in the mainstream media. While the company did recently initiate a review by the Fair Labor Association, human rights organizations regularly take Apple to task for not doing more to ensure factory workers employed by its China-based manufacturing partner Foxconn are treated well. Foxconn and parent company Hon Hai employs hundreds of thousands of workers, however, and hundreds more travel from around the country each day to line up and apply for jobs at Foxconn’s various plants. Marketplace Shanghai bureau chief Rob Schmitz was recently given a rare opportunity at operations within Foxconn’s Shenzhen iPad factory, and his crew was permitted to film a number of active stations on the iPad assembly line that have never been seen before. The result is an inside look at some of the fascinating technology that goes into building the world’s most popular tablet. Marketplace’s video follows below.

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Apple’s highly anticipated third-generation iPad doesn’t officially launch until this coming Friday, however the new tablet has already been unboxed on film. Vietnamese Apple blog Tinhte.vn managed to secure a new iPad ahead of its launch on March 16th, and carrying on the tradition of tech blogs past, the team there has posted an unboxing video starring Apple’s new slate. Specs and other details were made available when Apple unveiled the new iPad last week at a press conference in San Francisco, so no new information can be gleaned from the site’s unboxing. Anxious consumers waiting for their own iPads to be delivered on Friday — or at a much later date if they haven’t yet placed their orders — may enjoy seeing the sleek new Retina Display-toting tablet in action, however. Tinhte.vn’s iPad unboxing video follows below.

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Rovio on Thursday released a video featuring NASA astronaut and International Space Station flight engineer Don Pettit. In the video, Pettit explains microgravity with the help of characters from the popular Angry Birds franchise, even making a slingshot and firing a bird across the station. The fourth major Birds release is scheduled to land on Android, iOS, OSX and Windows on March 22nd. In “Angry Birds Space,” users will be flinging birds on zero gravity planets with new gameplay features such as slow-motion and lightspeed destruction. Rovio has previously confirmed that the game will feature completely new birds along with some of the originals, who now possess various super powers. Rovio’s video follows below.

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Apple’s unveiling of the new iPad overshadowed plenty of big news on Wednesday, and Epic Games’s unveiling of a brand new Unreal Engine 3 feature reel is something we couldn’t let slip through the cracks. The popular lab took to the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday to show off the latest features of its Unreal Engine 3, the latest version of Epic’s popular platform. Shown in the reel is a small sampling of what developers can accomplish with the latest version of Unreal Engine, and the engine supports game development across Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. Game samples for each of the aforementioned platforms are shown off in Epic’s video, which follows below.

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Apple will take the wraps off its highly anticipated iPad 3 next week and we have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Recurring reports point to an upgraded 9.7-inch display with 2,048 x 1,536-pixel Retina-like resolution, a faster quad-core Apple A6 processor, embedded 4G LTE connectivity on top of 3G and Wi-Fi, and a slightly redesigned case that is about 1 millimeter thicker than the iPad 2. We also have a pretty good idea of what not to expect, and that includes just about everything you’ll see in Aatma Studio’s iPad 3 concept video.

The 3D animators who brought us an amazing iPhone 5 concept video that has racked up more than 45.6 million views on YouTube is back, and this time they’ve strung together some fascinating ideas to create the iPad of the future. Notable features include an edge-to-edge Retina Display, internal magnets and NFC capabilities that allow multiple iPads to be daisy chained together, integrated projectors that shine interactive controls on surfaces surrounding the iPad, a holographic display and more.

We might see a few of these features make it to the iPad 10, but it’s safe to say the iPad 3 won’t be quite this impressive. Then again, we might be more likely to see a holographic edge-to-edge Retina Display and integrated projectors on the iPad 3 than we are to see some of the other rumors that have been reported over the past few months pan out. Aatma’s video follows below.

Earlier this month it was revealed that the popular social networking app Path was uploading entire iPhone address books to the company’s servers without first gaining permission. The data uploaded included full names, phone numbers and email addresses. Path quickly confirmed the report and issued an update to allow users to opt-in or out. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that a user’s address book isn’t the only information vulnerable on iOS devices, however. The publications claims photos can also be accessed by third-party app developers. Read on for more.

“After a user allows an application on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to have access to location information, the app can copy the user’s entire photo library, without any further notification or warning,” app developers confirmed to the Times. After an application gains permission to access location services, it can then gain access to photo and video files, which typically include the coordinates of the location at which they were taken.

“Conceivably, an app with access to location data could put together a history of where the user has been based on photo location,” co-founder of Curio, David E. Chen said. ”The location history, as well as your photos and videos, could be uploaded to a server. Once the data is off of the iOS device, Apple has virtually no ability to monitor or limit its use.”

In an effort to make photo apps more efficient, Apple first permitted access to the photo library in 2010 when the company released the fourth version of iOS. Developers have often questioned why Apple would allow permission to access location data of photos, however. “It’s very strange, because Apple is asking for location permission, but really what it is doing is accessing your entire photo library,” John Casasanta, owner of app development studio Tap Tap Tap, told the Times. “The message the user is being presented with is very, very unclear.”

With the help of an anonymous developer, The New York Times created a test application that requested location data and then confirming the report. While the application, PhotoSpy, was not submitted to the App Store, it did successfully access photos and their location data with the ability to export everything to a remote server.

“We’ve seen celebrities and famous people have pictures leaked and disclosed in the past. There’s every reason to think that if you make that easier to do, you’ll see much more of it,” said David Jacobs, a fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Not just celebrities are at risk. A lot of sites are trying to obtain images from everyday people and politicians to post online.”

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ABC recently became the latest news organization to be given a look inside consumer electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn’s facilities in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China, and the Nightline special that resulted from the trip will air on Tuesday. In the meantime, ABC News has posted a 90-second teaser video containing footage from reporter Bill Weir’s trip to China. Apple, of course, is the only Foxconn partner mentioned in the preview so we can expect the forthcoming report to focus on the Cupertino-based company’s wares, but the teaser promises a never-before-seen look at Foxconn’s facilities so it could be an eye-opening segment. Foxconn and its premier partner Apple have once again taken center stage in a human rights debate that recently saw protesters deliver a petition to Apple’s Grand Central Terminal store demanding the technology giant play a more active role in improving working conditions in the Chinese factories that assemble its hardware. ABC’s teaser video follows after the break.

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Rovio on Friday teased the next frontier for the company’s massive Angry Birds franchise. The fourth major Birds release will be called “Angry Birds Space” and is scheduled to land on mobile devices on March 22nd. In the newest edition, users will be flinging birds on zero gravity planets with new gameplay features such as slow-motion and lightspeed destruction, according to Yahoo Games. ”We think fans are really going to love it because we’ve already gotten amazing feedback on the physics of our games,” said Rovio’s GM of North America Andrew Stalbow. “They’re so accurate and easy to grasp that some teachers use Angry Birds in their lessons about projectile motion.” Rovio has confirmed that the game will have completely new birds along with some originals, who now possess various super powers. Since debuting in 2009, the franchise has been downloaded over 700 million times on iOS and Android alone. Read on for a video teaser from Rovio.

[Via Yahoo]

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BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen took the stage at the San Francisco MusicTech Summit on Monday and gave onlookers a live demonstration of his new peer-to-peer live video streaming technology. Cohen’s new tech is potentially capable of streaming live video to millions of Internet-connected devices without the need for a central infrastructure, and he said the protocol could be used for video conferencing or even streaming sporting events. “My goal here is to kill off television,” Cohen joked to GigaOm at the summit, adding that he developed the new technology from scratch because earlier peer-to-peer technology introduces too much latency for live applications. Cohen said he is in discussions with several potential partners regarding implementations for the new technology, but there are currently no firm launch plans for products based on the new protocol.

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The recent federal takedown of notorious file-sharing service Megaupload was initially seen as a huge victory for owners of copyrighted music and movies, but new research shows this may not be the case. Federal prosecutors successfully shuttered the service last month and arrested seven men associated with Megaupload including site founder Kim Dotcom, who is said to have earned $42 million from the site in 2010 alone. What was initially thought to be a victory for movie studios and record labels is turning out to be an empty win, however, as Megaupload’s closure has had almost no impact on file-sharing. Read on for more.

Internet consulting firm DeepField Networks analyzed Web traffic from six companies that provide the storage facilities responsible for roughly 80% of all file-sharing traffic. According to the firm, Megaupload’s files accounted for a huge portion of that traffic before a series of raids took the service offline last month; between 30% and 40% of all file-sharing downloads came from Megaupload.

The service moved so much data that global Internet traffic immediately decreased by between 2% and 3% when Megaupload’s services were taken offline on January 18th.

As big as Megaupload was, however, the service’s closure has not had the effect on file-sharing that copyright owners might have hoped. According to DeepField, Web traffic related to file-sharing recovered almost immediately as users simply utilized other services such as Rapidshare and Mediafire.

To compound matters, it looks like Internet Service Providers in the United States will likely take the biggest hit following Megaupload’s closure. ”Instead of terabytes of North America Megaupload traffic going to U.S. servers, most file sharing traffic now comes from Europe over far more expensive transatlantic links,” DeepField noted.

With great power comes great responsibility — and a flurry of advertising campaigns that target your wares. Samsung tried to make its name a verb in a recent round of anti-Apple ads where senseless iPhone owners got “Samsunged,” and the South Korea-based vendor’s campaign culminated with a $10 million extravaganza that aired during the Super Bowl. Amazon is next up to the plate, and the company’s recent commercial takes aim at Apple’s iPad. A woman sunbathing and reading a book on her Kindle is approached by a passing iPad owner who is intrigued by the fact that she can read in the sunlight. When the man mentions the Kindle’s inability to play movies, she points to a cabana where her two children are sitting, each with a Kindle Fire tablet. As a final jab, the woman points out that her three Kindles — one $79 eReader and two $199 tablets — are still cheaper than a single iPad. Amazon’s full commercial can be viewed below.