Rovio began its path to stardom in December 2009 with the hugely popular Angry Birds franchise, which has sold over 12 million copies on iOS devices alone. After the initial success, the Finnish video game company decided to produce Angry Birds for other operating systems that utilize touchscreens, such as Android, Symbian and Windows Phone, generating in total over 1 billion downloads.

The game has since been developed for PCs and gaming consoles, but now, Rovio is taking a further leap into the entertainment void. After six months of teasing a new phenomenon, Rovio has finally come forward and revealed it will debut its new web-based cartoon series, Angry Birds Toons, on March 16.

Set on Piggy Island, the animated adventure will feature short episodes airing once every week, promising to give viewers a new incite on the Angry Birds world and its inhabitants, delivering a sort of behind the scenes aspect to the game itself.

Moreover, explanations to unanswered questions may also be offered, such as how and why did the birds and pigs actually begin their egg-thirsty conflict? Rovio promises the web series will “throw the doors to Piggy Island wide open.”

Although it is unclear what devices or channels the show will air on, CNET reveals that there will be 52 episodes that will each run for about three minutes long and it will be available to watch on a wide variety of devices.

In an interview with Rovio CEO Mikael Hed, the The Wall Street Journal found out that “the company is looking a long term future for the franchise” and that it’s “looking at content and not growing distribution channels” for the animated series.

Rovio has also confirmed it is  set to release an Angry Birds 3D animated movie in the summer of 2016, with “Despicable Me” producer John Cohen signed on to produce it. Also, the former chairman of Marvel Studios and executive producer of Iron Man is set to be the executive producer of the Angry Birds movie.

Rovio is in rapid succession powering into both the gaming and entertainment market, with merchandise, games, its own web series, an upcoming movie and even an amusement park based in China. What ever will they throw at us next? “Stay tooned!“.

Despite Google’s Nexus 7 reportedly selling half the units than Apple’s iPad Mini in 2012, as well as being outsold by the Kindle Fire, the Nexus 7 is expected to sell 2 million more units on top of the unconfirmed 6 million units sold so far by the time the second generation Nexus 7 is released in June 2013, according to DigiTimes. That’s an estimated total of 8 million units sold by June this year.

According to Taiwanese suppliers, the Google Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD have set the price cap for mainstream tablets at $199, and thus other vendors have been driven to manufacture 7-inch tablets instead of 10-inch models. Since the Nexus 7 started selling, other tablet makers have launched, or are about to launch, 7-inch models of their own, priced at $199 or even more competitively.

As for the next Nexus 7 tablet, the first rumors have appeared suggesting the device will not come with a NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor, although the product is yet to be confirmed by Google.

Are you buying a 7-inch tablet this year?

The HTC One has been the dominant subject in the technology spotlight today, shaping up to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing and powerhouse ready devices to date, which when pulled off correctly, can be a very attractive combination.

We have good news for UK residents, you can pre-order the device with Clove for £510. This will get you 32GB of internal memory, accompanied by the increasingly popular Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 1.7GHz quad-core processor, a 4.7-inch SuperLCD3 capacitive display with an impressive 1920 x 1080 (468 ppi) resolution, and a staggering 4MP UltraPixel rear-facing camera, and a 2.1MP front-facing camera.

The price may seem excessive for some, but more of us seem to be purchasing SIM-only devices nowadays, for their freedom from costly contracts.

The HTC One is on the fast lane to stardom in todays news, so why not get ahead of the game and pre-order yourself one at Clove.

The Global Certification Forum on Monday confirmed that Asus will be soon distributing the first Asus tablet to use an Intel processor, and that it will be called the Asus Fonepad.

Additionally, the GCF has also confirmed the pad will support 3G connectivity, but no LTE for this specific version (model number ME371MG). Although the device has not been officially confirmed by Asus, we can expect to see the company debut its supposedly budget-friendly tablet fairly soon, with the Mobile World Congress event opening itself to the public in less than a week.

On the technical front, we know that the Fonepad will run Android Jelly Bean, and boast an Intel 1.2GHz Z2420 processor with PowerVR SGX450 graphics. The device will also include a 7-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 800, a 1.2MP front-facing camera and 3MP rear camera, 1GB RAM, microSD card slot, 4,270mAh battery, and an aluminium case. The Fonepad comes with 8GB, 16GB or 32GB of internal memory. It weighs in at 340 grams and will be 10.4mm thick.

The tablet is expected to hit the shelves near April or May, at around $150 – $200.

Asus is also planning to officially unveil a 10-inch tablet soon, the Memo Pad 10, which also runs Jelly Bean, but instead comes with a quad-core Nvidia processor.

Will your money be invested in the new Fonepad by Asus?

When Sony first announced the Xperia Tablet S, its slightly unreasonable pricing didn’t exactly help in stealing the limelight from its competitors such as Google, with the Nexus 10 making a firm stand in the tablet market. For $400, Sony offered the 16GB version which carries a 9.4-inch 1280×800 display, 1.4GHz Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8MP rear camera and a 1MP front camera, powered by Android 4.0.

Recently however, Sony has revealed that you can grab its tablet for $50 less than its original price, providing you buy it from Sony directly. In addition to this, you can get their ‘casual cover’, usually $59.99, for absolutely nothing. That basically accumulates to $110 savings.

The Sony Xperia Tablet S got off to a rough start, after sales of the tablet were halted only a month after its release due to its supposedly water resistant chassis letting water seep into the tablet and damage it, which Sony revealed was a manufacturing defect originating from one of their plants in China. It is in no way however a bad tablet, boasting a powerful processor accompanied by a premium, stylish build, it’s something many may want to consider seriously if you’re in the market for a great tablet.

With Christmas just around the corner, Gameloft has jumped on the bargain bandwagon offering the majority of its usually $6.99 Android games for just $0.99.

After advertising the deals of its iOS games, Gameloft announced today that it’s “Android’s turn”. The deal includes games such as N.O.V.A 2 and 3, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Dark Knight Rises, 9mm, Backstab and Modern Combat 2 and 3 at the reduced priced of $0.99. How long the deal will last however is unknown, but we’d recommend you grab one or even more of these huge Android gaming titles in light of the festive season.

You can see the full list of games and links to their respective Google Play on Gameloft’s official website.

Many Google Nexus 7 users reported on sites like XDA-Developers and Reddit major lag issues after being update to Android 4.2, with no official response from Google or Asus. However, one XDA member has found an alleged fix to the bug, which reveals the issue derives from the Google Currents application. The method to resolve the issue is as follows:

1. Open your app draw
2. Open Google Currents
3. Click the three dots in the top right corner of the app
4. Tap “settings”
5. Uncheck “enable background sync”
6. Reboot your Nexus 7

With no official recognition of the bug, it is not certain as to whether or not this is a definitive fix for the issue, but if it helps your Nexus 7 revive its speed let us know in the comments so we can help others work around the fault.

After just days of running its Amazon Prime monthly subscription tests, online retailer Amazon has stopped the experimental scheme whose object was to see how customers would respond to the option of a monthly Amazon Prime subscription, rather than an annual rate of $79 per year.

A spokesperson for Amazon revealed that the company has “completed” testing and customers will no longer be able to sign up to the program.

Amazon Prime’s yearly subscription deal is undoubtedly the better financial route for long term customers. However, Amazon has not made it clear whether or not the monthly subscription option was a huge success or a blistering downfall.

The Prime service on Amazon gives its paying customers added advantages to their online retailing services such as unlmited instant streaming of TV shows and movies, unlimited next-day deliveries for all eligible orders, evening and express deliveries at a reduced price and access to over 200,000 e-books with no due return dates.

It’s no mystery as to why so many customers willingly sign up to the yearly deal. With so many premium features it’s hard not to be tempted to pay the extra cash to receive the impressive benefits Amazon has to offer. But will its monthly subscription scheme be enough to lure in more customers? Let us know your opinion below!

In addition to the Google Nexus 10 and Nexus 4 devices that were launched earlier today, Google has also released the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean SDK to developers. It includes access to lock screen widgets, the Daydream interactive screensaver mode, enhanced support for external displays, and several more features open to developers for Jelly Bean 4.2 OS.

The Android SDK can be downloaded on the official Android Developers site. Google’s full release notes are featured below, as found at the Android Developers Blog.

Performance

We’ve worked with our partners to run Renderscript computation directly in the GPU on the Nexus 10, a first for any mobile computation platform.

New ways to engage users

Users can now place interactive lock screen widgetsdirectly on their device lock screens, for instant access to favorite apps and content. With just a small update, you can adapt any app widget to run on the lock screen.Daydream is an interactive screensaver mode that users can encounter when their devices are charging or docked in a desk dock. You can create interactive daydreams that users display in this mode, and they can include any type of content. 

New interaction and entertainment experiences

Android 4.2 introduces platform support for external displays that goes beyond mirroring. Your apps can now target unique content to any number of displays attached to an Android device.

Enhancements for international users

To help you create better apps for users in languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian, Android 4.2 includes native RTL support, including layout mirroring. With native RTL support, you can deliver the same great app experience to all of your users with minimal extra work. Android 4.2 also includes a variety of font and character optimizations for Korean, Japanese, Indic, Thai, Arabic and Hebrew writing systems.

What say you, developers, are you ready for Android 4.2?

Sony Mobile Hong Kong has recently published information on its Facebook page regarding an improved benchmark for their Sony Xperia TX handset running the new software update, v7.0.A.3.197.

It is not entirely clear as to what improvements the update brings, but readers of Xperia Blog report that the update brings a smoother user interface, power management, additional free RAM, screen mirroring capability to compatible WiFi enabled TVs, and improved WiFi connectivity. Stand by battery life has also been increased, to give users the added convenience of the phone’s battery lasting longer when not in use.

For now it looks like the firmware update is only available to the Vietnamese Xperia TX version, but should soon be released worldwide.

According to the image update ,the update has brought an 18% increase in the quadrant bench score, boosting its original score of 4779 to 5649 after the update is applied.