Google’s Unified Messaging Service Will Work Across Five Platforms

A new report from Droid-Life details Google’s upcoming Babble—or Babel, sources say— messaging service, and how it’ll unify across five different platforms. The platform is allegedly being tested internally by Google across Android, iOS, Chrome, Google+ and Gmail, and willsync across all five seamlessly in a conversation-based UI. If ever there was one, this is Google’s answer to BBM and iMessage.

Google is allegedly going to push these bullet points when the service officially launches (date is still unknown):

• Access the same conversation list from anywhere
• A new, conversation-based UI
• Advanced group conversations
• Ability to send pictures
• Improved notifications across devices

If this new Babel service turns out to be legit, I’m already a fan. We currently use a few different methods to communicate at work, and it’ll be nice to have something that unifies across five separate platforms. Of course, this is still a rumor at this point, but many of them hammer around the same main points. If this is something Google has planned for I/O in May, we don’t have too much longer to wait.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

iPhone 5S Due in Summer, New iPads in April

There are a bevy of fresh Apple rumors this morning. One of them suggests that Apple will add a fingerprint scanner to its next generation iPhone and that the new device will be introduced alongside a budget iPhone this June or July. A second rumor, also published on Tuesday, suggests that Apple will instead launch the device in August and will refresh its iPads in April.

“We expect Apple will introduce its new iPhones and iOS7 in June, and start shipping the new iPhones (5S and low-cost model) in the FDD version in July,” KGI Securities analyst Ming Chi Kuo said in an investor note. “Both dates are earlier than last year’s roadmap. We attribute this to: (1) an effort to avoid repeating the fatal mistake of last year of the delayed iPhone 5 launch, which gave competitors room to grab market share; and (2) the new iPhones this year are mainly designed on the basis of the current iPhone 5, which suggests development time could be reduced.”

Kuo said he believes the iPhone 5S will run on a faster A7 processor and will offer a new “smart flash” technology for better photos. There will also allegedly be a fingerprint scanner built into the home button to increase security. He also argues that Apple’s highly rumored low-cost iPhone, which other rumors have suggested was delayed until next year, will be crafted out of fiberglass and plastic and will be sold in several different colors at the same time as the iPhone 5S.

Rene Ritchie from iMore is in agreement that the iPhone 5S be thinner and will pack a more powerful processor and better optics than the iPhone 5, but said that it will launch in August instead of June/July. Ritchie also said Apple is gearing up to launch its iPad Mini 2 and an iPad 5 sometime in April.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]