حول العالم

What’s 27 inches across and has almost twice the pixel count of your puny 4K monitor? Dell’s new UltraSharp 5K monitor, that’s what. With a resolution of 5120×2880, the 27-inch monster has seven times as many pixels as your 1080p monitor, or four times as many as your 2560×1440 (1440p) monitor. It has a PPI of 218, which puts it on about par with the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (2880×1800). When it goes on sale around Christmas time — for $2500 — it will finally replace IBM’s mythical 13-year-old T220/T221 as the highest-res desktop monitor. The Dell UltraSharp 27 Ultra HD 5K monitor, to give its full name, is, unsurprisingly, a workstation-grade piece of hardware. It has all the usual trappings of a professional monitor, such as Dell PremierColor calibration, and an anti-smudge/anti-reflective coating. There’s six (!) USB ports and a media card reader, too. Curiously there’s also two integrated 16W Harmon Kardon speakers for some reason — presumably b...

We’re just a few days away from Apple’s special iPhone 6 event on September 9, and right on schedule the New York Times has published a detailed exposé — most likely leaked directly by the highest echelons of Apple — of everything that we can expect. We now have almost-certain confirmation that the iPhone 6 will come in two flavors — a 4.7-inch model, and a 5.5-inch phablety monster. Furthermore, Apple will also reveal its first new product since Tim Cook took the helm from Steve Jobs three years ago: the iWatch. Curiously, it sounds like the iWatch will also come in two different sizes. Near-field communication (NFC) will be available in both the iPhone 6 and iWatch, and Apple will announce partnerships with Amex, Visa, and MasterCard, allowing the Cupertino company to finally wade into the mobile payments/digital wallet arena. The iWatch will have a sapphire glass front, but the iPhone 6 might not. At roughly the same time every year, Apple performs an u...

Windows Phone smartphones have gotten quite good, so why doesn't anyone buy them? Personal Tech columnist Joanna Stern tests the HTC One (M8) with Windows Phone 8.1 to find out. Photo: Drew Evans/The Wall Street Journal. Last week, I went hunting for people using Windows Phones in Times Square. Two hours in one of the busiest spots on Earth—zero sightings. Instead, there were thousands of people, from Iowa, Italy and India, holding up their glowing iPhones or Android phones to take photos of Great White Way. One kind lady from London did tell me she was fairly certain her great uncle owned a Windows Phone. While my method wasn't scientific, the straw poll represents the reality of the global smartphone market. Google 's GOOGL -0.57% ...

Chinese smartphone makers are increasing their presence in the global market. This year, we’ve already seen Lenovo Group and Huawei Technologies gain global market share, posing a threat to market leader Samsung Electronics 005930.SE   -2.06% . Now, other lesser-known Chinese players are also trying to expand overseas.  Coolpad, a smartphone maker based in Shenzhen, plans to spend millions of dollars this year to promote its brand in Southeast Asia, Europe and the U.S., its senior executive told The Wall Street Journal in a recent interview. So why are the Chinese players all focusing on overseas? “China’s smartphone market is getting saturated,” said BNP Paribas analyst Peter Yu. “If you want to keep growing, you have to look outside.” Between 2011 and 2013, smartphone shipments in China nearly quadrupled, according to research firm IDC. Now, the rate of annual growth is expected to slow . Meanwhile, smartphone sales are rising sharply in emerging market...

Fuhu's Nabi Big Tab 24 is a high-definition Android touch device that's big enough for your kids to share. WSJ's Wilson Rothman looks at whether the $530 tablet's promise of increased engagement, and even cooperation, is worth it, despite the lack of mobility. Just search for "kid tablets" at walmart.com or target.com, and you'll see dozens of brightly colored tablets with rubber bumpers and cutesy names like Kurio, Orbo, Tabby and Meep. As a parent, I tend to think of these as product spam. It's true, the more reputable makers jam the tablets with age-appropriate content and give parents plenty of controls and tools to incentivize the educational use of the things, but that's still a hard sales pitch for a household that already has two iPads and a Kindle Fire HDX—with more than enough apps, games and interactive books to go around. But when Fuhu—an El Segundo, Calif.-based company that's been...

Google GOOGL   -0.61% ’s Android is extending its dominance over rival mobile-operating systems, including Apple AAPL   +0.13% ’s iOS, new data show. Smartphones running Android accounted for 85% of global shipments in the second quarter, according to research firm Strategy Analytics, up from roughly 80% in 2013. Overall smartphone shipments grew to 295 million units last quarter, a 27% increase from the same period in 2013. Android phones are sold by a variety of hardware makers, including Samsung, HTC and Xiaomi. “Like the PC market, Android is on the verge of turning smartphone platforms into a one-horse race,” said Neil Mawston, Strategy Analytics’ executive director, in a press release. “Its low-cost services and user-friendly software remain wildly attractive to hardware makers, operators and consumers worldwide.” Rival smartphone operating-system makers all saw their market shares decline in the second quarter, compared with a year earlier. Apple’s ...

Apple Inc.'s stock price just returned to triple digits. A record high is not far behind. Shares hit $100 on Tuesday, the highest level since September 2012. Apple shares have been rejuvenated in recent months thanks to strong quarterly results, high expectations for new products and a 7-for-1 stock split that was completed in June. The split, which increased the number of shares outstanding and lowered the price accordingly, was aimed at making Apple’s stock more accessible to a wider audience. For Apple bulls, the strategy has reaped immediate benefits. Shares have rallied by more than 30% since late April, when the company announced the split in conjunction with an upbeat quarterly report. The stock is now poised to take its record high achieved in September 2012. Back then, Apple hit a closing high of $702.10, which is the equivalent of $100.30 in today’s split-adjusted terms. Apple is currently less than 1% away from reclaiming that mark. Apple investors are...

Apple’s iPhone 6 press event is only a few weeks away — it’s scheduled for September 9 — so it’s no surprise that iPhone rumors are running wild right now. This time around, the rumor mill’s refrain is “bigger, stronger, faster.” The potential for larger screens, scratch-proof sapphire glass, and incredibly fast hardware specs is being widely reported by the enthusiast press and traditional news outlets alike. Unsurprisingly, Apple is going to have a lot of hype to live up to for the iPhone 6 release. There are just too many iPhone 6 rumors floating around to count, so I’ve selected only a handful of the most intriguing examples to discuss today. Some of these are certainly more likely than others, but each one is incredibly tantalizing to gadget lovers. Whether or not you plan on buying Apple’s next smartphone, something here is bound to tickle your fancy. After all, once Apple implements a feature in its flagship product, other companies are bound to respo...

Thanks in large part to the Raspberry Pi, mini PCs are all the rage these days. In terms of power, none of them yet compare to a standard gaming rig, but they’re slowly creeping toward that end. If some leaked slides are to be believed, then Intel’s next NUC — the next Next Unit of Computing — is creeping much faster than the competition. The NUC 2.0 is a significant upgrade compared to the original The initial next-gen NUCs will be powered by Core i3 and i5 Broadwell and Braswell chips, can support up to either 8GB or 16GB of DDR3 RAM depending on the model, and will feature Intel HD graphics. Don’t balk at the inclusion of Intel graphics — Steam’s hardware survey shows that Intel GPUs are the most used on the service. This makes the NUC a real possibility for use as a Steam Machine, assuming Valve hasn’t abandoned the initiative by then. The exact models of GPUs are not revealed, but the slides state that they will be capable of 4K output, so it looks l...

Microsoft is planning to release a preview build of Windows 9 at a special press event on September 30, according to sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans. The date could still consumer preview of Windows 9 before you get to play with your new Cortana digital assistant, however. change, but September 30 lines up neatly with previous leaks that suggested a late-September or early-October release date for the Windows 9 technology preview. It’s still unclear exactly how many of Windows 9′s hotly anticipated features will actually make it into the September 30 release — but hopefully we’ll at least see the resurrected Start menu and Metro apps running on the Desktop. We wouldn’t be surprised if you have to wait a little longer for the A few days ago, news leaked that Microsoft was planning to release the first public build of Windows 9 at the end of September or beginning of October. Now, sources are telling The Verge that Microsoft is planning a Windows 9 press...

If you want a versatile laptop that does a little bit of everything, check out today’s big discount on the newly updated Lenovo Z50. This laptop packs a Core i7 processor, dedicated graphics, great specs and respectable portability, all for just $729 after our coupon code is applied. That’s $370 off the regular price. This laptop packs a recently released Core i7-4510U processor, a CPU that will deliver powerful performance while also preserving precious battery life. This pairs with a similarly new 2GB NVIDIA 820M dedicated graphics card, a solid GPU that can handle most of today’s games and will certainly fly through all your old favorites. Together this combo will let you put the 15.6-inch 1080p anti-glare display to good use, opening up tons of real estate for games, movies, or other applications. With a 1TB hybrid hard drive that includes an 8GB SSD cache, you’ll get speedy boot and resume times while also keeping ample storage space for al...

A ‘disco squid’ that changes colour and glows in the dark ensures that life below the ocean waves is never dull. The Caribbean reef squid’s incredible technicolour display was caught on camera as it hunted for food at night. The 12-inch (30cm) cephalopod was snapped searching for prey in the shadows, before rapidly swimming away with its catch while flashing different colours. +2 The 12-inch (30 cm) Carribean reef squid (pictured) was snapped searching for prey in the shadows, before rapidly swimming away with its catch while flashing different colours Photographer Masa Ushioda, 43, encountered the rainbow-coloured creature 50ft (15metres) underwater during a dive at the City of Washington Wreck off Florida Keys in the US. Mr Ushioda, who lives in Hawaii, said: ‘I found this squid hunting for prey and it started targeting some zoo plankton off my dive lights. +2 The squid uses chromatophores in its skin to rapidly change colour ...