• Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Becomes the Highest Selling Game of All Time

    // Gradly // blog, Games, News, Rants & Raves No Responses

    Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has broken the franchise’s own sales record by reportedly selling 9.3 million copies in the first 24 hours eliminating its predecessor Call of Duty: Black Ops that sold over 7 million copies in its first 24 hours. MW3 is now the highest selling game of all time.

    Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 breaks sales records

    A reported 1.5 million people queued at midnight globally to get their hands on Modern Warfare 3, with a total of 9.3 million copies sold on the first day. The Xbox 360 version sees around a 54% share, meaning it’s the first game on one platform to pass 5 million on its first day. The PlayStation 3 version held 42%, which is around the 4 million mark. Both day ones are only slightly behind Black Ops entire first week sales. The PC version and the Wii version held the remaining 4%, which is around 370,000 units.

    As a whole, Modern Warfare 3 is up 33% over Black Ops’ first day sales, and a whopping 55% up on the previous Modern Warfare. the US and the UK combined account for 7 million, which is just over 75%. According to VGChartz:

    Call of Duty day one sales

    Early data suggests first week sales are on course for around 12 to 13.5 million. With just over 87 million Call of Duty games already sold on home consoles and PC this generation, by the end of this week the Call of Duty franchise will have sold over 100 million games this generation.

  • Samsung is Working on Flexible Screens for Smartphones and Tablets

    // Gradly // blog, News, Samsung, Tech. 2 Responses

    Galaxy Skin

    During a call to discuss Samsung’s most recent financial results, the company’s spokesman, Robert Yi, said that Samsung was working on a flexible display for its upcoming smartphones and tablets. Samsung hopes to introduce flexible displays to its smartphone lineup in as early as 2012

    “The flexible display, we are looking to introduce sometime in 2012, hopefully the earlier part,” said spokesman Robert Yi during an earnings call. “The application probably will start from the handset side.”

    Yi said tablets and other mobile devices with flexible displays would follow.”

    Samsung has already shown flexible screen technology in the past, with the OLED display held inside rigid cases that kept them curved.

    The new Samsung Galaxy Skin will feature an AMOLED display that will allow the phone to bend around a cylinder with a 1-inch diameter. Brighter than the normal screen, the AMOLED display is also low-energy and almost unbreakable, according to the reports.

    Using a plastic polyimide substrate instead of glass, Samsung has produced displays that are “rollable and bendable” and which can even “survive blows from a hammer”. The phone was developed by Prof Haeseong Jee and Jye Yeon You.

    The key material of this new technology is ‘graphene’, touted as “the miracle material”. Research by scientists from Columbia University has established that ‘graphene’ is the strongest material in the world, “some 200 times stronger than structural steel”.

    The Galaxy Skin will offer a high-resolution 800×480 flexible AMOLED screen, eight megapixel camera and 1Gb of RAM as well as a 1.2GHz processor. Samsung has not yet disclosed the device’s operating system, but there have been rumors about Jelly Bean – Google’s next Android release after Ice Cream Sandwich – or a new release called Android Flexy.

    The new core technology also allows the phone to be used as a mouse, a clock or a wrist-watch. Samsung has not confirmed the exact date of release.

  • Siri Successfully Ported to Run on iPhone 4 and iPod Touch

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Featured, iPhone, Jailbreak, News, Rants & Raves, Tech. 1 Response

    Siri has finally made its way to the iPhone 4

    Developer Steven Troughton-Smith had successfully ported the Siri onto the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch. The video provided below not only shows the Siri functionality on an iPhone 4, but is in depth and shows a side-to-side comparison against the iPhone 4S. In addition, the video shows the Siri Dictation in action.

    iPhone 4S jailbreak was the key to make the port working successfully on iPhone 4. 9to5mac’s Mark Gurman has brought this story and an got exclusive interview about the port with the developer:

    Mark: Where do you go from here with the port?

    Steven: At this point it’s all about confirming this works across devices, making it reproducible (we got it working on two devices today), and documenting everything. It does require files from an iPhone 4S which aren’t ours to distribute, and it also requires a validation token from the iPhone 4S that has to be pulled live from a jailbroken iPhone 4S, and it’s about a 20-step process right now.

    Mark: In its current state, is the port 100% functional, is there anything you would like to see work better?

    Steven: Yes, it seems to be 100% functional. I’m working on the rough edges, but everything that works on the iPhone 4S seems to work here.

    Mark: Do you ever see Siri showing up in Cydia (or another jailbreak store) for non natively supported devices?

    Steven: No, I could not be a part of that. I have no doubts that others will package this up and distribute it quasi-illegally, or try and sell it to people. I am only interested in the technology and making it work; proving that it works and works well on the iPhone 4 and other devices.

    Mark: So, you also got Siri working on the fourth-generation iPod touch, how is that working out?

    Steven: We got chpwn’s iPod touch up and running with Siri after proving it works on my iPhone 4. Unfortunately the microphone on the iPod is nowhere near as good as the iPhone – you will notice that the Siri level meter hardly moves when you talk to it. While it does work, you have to speak loudly and clearly to the iPod.

    Mark: How long did porting take you, what was the “I got it” moment?

    Steven: Basically, I already had everything I needed to make it work. I had spent a lot of time mapping out in my head exactly how Siri works on the iPhone. All I needed was access to a jailbroken iPhone 4S to put my hunch to the test. It literally took no longer than 10 minutes to put all the pieces in place and perform our first test on my iPhone 4, and it was an instant success.

  • Google Accidentally Shows Gmail New Look in Action

    // Gradly // blog, Design, google, News No Responses

    Gmail new interface and features

    A video inadvertently posted to Google’s YouTube account has given a sneak peek at some of the changes that will be coming to Gmail in the very near future. It’s based on the Preview theme that’s already available in Gmail, but there are many other changes: an action bar that uses icons instead of text labels, a completely new interface for conversations, profile pictures next to contacts, a flexible layout that adapts to any window size, display density options like in Google Docs, resizable chat/labels sections, new high-definition themes and an updated search box that includes advanced options.

    The video was quickly taken down but the guys at Google Operating System have snagged a mirror for your viewing pleasure:

    The new interface probably be available soon.