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Apple’s classic handset continues to be refined in the iPhone 5s with new camera technology, a multi-functional fingerprint sensor, and a whole new vision for the company’s unique mobile operating system iOS. This device line shows its relative timelessness by continuing to be one of the best selling smartphones around the world, even as the competition radically reinvents their looks and functionality.

While LG did bring the super-odd LG G2 with back-facing volume and power keys along with the curved version of the handset in the LG G Flex, this company’s star for the year has to be the LG Nexus 5. As the best smartphone for it’s off-contract price above $200, the Nexus 5 brings the highest-powered Qualcomm processor on the market, the Snapdragon 800, to pair with a 5-inch 1080p display and a friendly rubbery back and build.

If there was one thing Motorola was good at this year, it was the element of surprise. With the Moto X, this newly-dubbed Google Company brought a custom-order smartphone with a set of abilities matched with a processor build unique the manufacturer. The Moto X was also released in a relatively wide manner, coming to each of the four major wireless carriers as well as Republic Wireless and U.S. Cellular for what was easily the most prolific smartphone ever released by Motorola in the USA. This handset also received an update to Android 4.4 KitKat before most of Google’s Nexus devices.

Samsung continued to refine its best-selling smartphone lineup with the Samsung Galaxy S 4, a device that took last year’s move to a “Nature UI” on both the outside and the inside – certainly a move that was not foreseen by the public. But it worked! Samsung continues to sell more smartphones than any other Android-based smartphone manufacturer, with both the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and the Galaxy Note 3 at the helm. The Galaxy Note 3 also continues to lead the larger smartphone segment with Samsung’s own S Pen technology and the rest of the company’s unique connectivity innovations.

The HTC One was one of the first hero smartphones to be released by a major manufacturer in 2013 but it remains in use by more than one SlashGear employee here at the end of the year. The proof is in the pudding – both the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and the HTC One were chosen by Google to be the first two Google Play Edition devices this year, and the HTC One is still running the sharpest display on the market with 1080p on a 4.7-inch display – that’s 468 pixels per inch, and it’s backed up by one of the finest cameras on a smartphone and two forward facing (that’s important) speakers branded BoomSound for a good reason.

Sony brought a break-out hit this year as well in the Sony Xperia Z, a device so odd we were compelled to review it twice. Waterproof, working with Sony’s finest smartphone-based camera yet, and rolling with a fine looking glass front and back, this machine could only be replaced with the slightly more powerful Xperia Z1 later in the year.

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Slashgear Week In Review

SlashGear Week in Review – Week 15 2010

Hello gang, and welcome to this week’s edition of the Week in Review. Tons of stuff happened last week, the iPad, and the new iPhone OS were some of the top news items for the week. Analysts claimed that 74% of iPad buyers were Mac owners and 66% had iPhones. I am not surprised by that at all.

Early in the week we reviewed the Hercules eCAFE EC-1000W netbook. In the end, the netbook looks different from the masses, but the price for performance is too high. The Lenovo C200 AIO with Ion 2 was unveiled this week along with the new IdeaPad S10-3s. The AIO has an 18.5-inch screen and includes a DVD drive and lots more.

ATI whipped out its FirePro V8800 graphics card mid-week. It is claimed to be the most powerful professional video card ever. OCZ introduced the new Z-Drive series SSDs this week that plugs into PCI-E slots. The PCI-E connectivity it said to remove throughput bottlenecks the SATA 3Gbps port has.

Onkyo debuted a new netbook this week called the MX1007A4 with a processor that is slow — the Atom Z515. However, the power-sipping rig promises 14.4 hours of battery life. The ugly and expensive Prive phone turned up mid-week. It’s a late 80’s style brick phone covered in real gold and diamonds costing as much as a house.

Amazon listed an intriguing 3D TV that needs no glasses to view and has a built-in Blu-ray player this week. The catch was there are no pics and the StreamTV maker is not a company we have heard of. The cool looking Archos 7 tablet cleared the FCC this week. That should me we see the thing on the market soon to fight the iPad.

The checks resulting from the settlement over the class action suit for iPod nano first gen owners. The checks were for $37.50.

Dish unveiled the coolest DVR in its line called the VIP 922. The DVR has Slingbox tech inside and has a 1TB HDD. That long awaited Eee Keyboard got its own video promo late in the week. We still don’t know when the thing will hit store shelves.

An Apple patent turned up this week outlining NFC transaction tech for the iPhone. The patent shows how the iPhone could be used to pay for things like a credit card. Super Talent unveiled a new line of dirt cheap SSDs this week that don’t offer tons of performance, but only cost $65. Capacities range from 8GB to 64GB.

Creative launched new ZEN PMPs this week including the X-Fi Style, Style 100, and Style 300 PMPs. The line is very colorful and the X-Fi version has a 2.4-inch TFT screen. The big news of the week was the iPhone 4.0 OS event. You can glean most of the details of the new OS by checking out our iPhone OS 4.0 wrap up. Thanks for reading!

Slashgear Cyber Monday Round Up

SlashGear Cyber Monday Round Up

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Black Friday may traditionally be the big shopping blow-out after Thanksgiving, but Cyber Monday is the battery-powered upstart that wants to sate our electronics needs. After the cut, SlashGear’s Cyber Monday shopping guide, including Apple accessory discounts, cut-price MacBook, MacBook Pro and iMac deals, cheap HDTVs and more!

Apple’s main discounts from Friday have expired, but the company is offering savings on various accessories and peripherals in its US store today. That includes $20 off Beats by Dr. Dre Solo HD headphones and $30 off an M-Audio GarageBand keyboard. If you actually want Apple hardware you’ll need to head to resellers; MacConnection is offering up to $240 off MacBook Pro notebooks and up to $180 off the iMac.

Amazon is more ambitious, with Cyber Monday deals across most of its store categories. The Roku XD is 15-percent off, and there’s 35-percent off Sanyo’s VPC-GH4 1080p camcorder. If you’re after a standalone GPS unit then there are plenty to choose from, including 70-percent off Garmin’s nuvi 265, bringing it under $100. Amazon will also have various deals going live through the day, including a sub-$300 third-gen iPod touch.

Best Buy also has some serious discounts, with $400 off a 60-inch Mitsubishi 1080p DLP HDTV bringing it under $600. If you’d rather a massive LCD, there’s Sharp’s 60-inch AQUOS LC60E78UN with $400 off, bringing it to $1,299.99. Meanwhile there’s a half-price $99.99 Kodak ESP 7250 wireless all-in-one printer.Walmart is running a whole Cyber Week special, with a $69 14-megapixel Kodak EasyShare C183 on offer, together with iPod nano bundles from $138 (Apple charge $149 for the nano alone). If you’d rather go with Microsoft, Walmart is offering a 32GB Zune HD with the Premium Car Pack thrown in for $188.Newegg’s Cyber Monday deals have been running as part of their Black Friday promotions, but there’s still $170 off a CyberpowerPC Gamer Xtreme 1077 Core i5 desktop. Oh, and T-Mobile will still give you a free second HTC HD7 if you buy one from them.

There are plenty of deals if you’re looking for a new case for your iPod, iPhone or other PMP/smartphone. XGear are offering 60-percent off iPhone 4, 3GS and 3G cases, along with iPod touch 4G cases, with coupon code CM2910.

If it’s laptops or desktops you’re after, Dealzon have scouted out a solid selection:

14.5″ HP Envy 14 Beats Core i7 for $1,049.99. [$150 off Black Friday]

14.1″ Lenovo ThinkPad T410 Core i7 for $970.50. [$129 off Black Friday].

12.1″ Lenovo ThinkPad X201 Core i7 Laptop for $1,031.80. [$144 off Black Friday].

Dell Zino HD Mini Desktop w/ Blu-ray for $299.99. [$70 off Black Friday].

13.1″ Sony Z Series Core i5, 256GB SSD for $1,899.99. [$350 off last week].

10″ ASUS Eee PC 1001PX-EU17-BK Netbook for $199.99 at Newegg. [$42 off next lowest].

We’ll be keeping the shopping guide updated throughout the day as new deals pop up, so let us know if you’ve seen anything unmissable! Happy shopping…

Prometheus: Slashgear Meets Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce And Logan Marshall

Prometheus: SlashGear meets Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce and Logan Marshall-Green

The alien creatures in Prometheus might arguably steal the show, but whether they’re antagonist, host or just plain meat, the human cast is equally important. SlashGear sat down with stars Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce and Logan Marshall-Green after the Prometheus world premiere to talk post-curtain rumors, working in the shadow of Ripley, and how the whole film might actually be a robot love story.

Michael Fassbender plays David, the robotic member of the Prometheus crew, while Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green play Shaw and Holloway, the scientist couple dead-set on exploring LV-223. Guy Pearce plays Peter Weyland, founder of Weyland-Yutani Corporation and the billionaire bankrolling the whole mission.

[Question] My question is about hypersleep. You played people waking up from this hypersleep state – which we don’t actually have. At that point in your performance, what were you doing; what was happening to you, how were you feeling, and what had you woken up from?

[Noomi Rapace] I actually did a detox, I put myself on some kind of detox thing for a week before. I was only drinking…

[Michael Fassbender] Logan’s like, “you didn’t tell me that, we were supposed to share everything!”

[Logan Marshall-Green] I ate, like, a pizza the night before.

[NR] We were just drinking different things for a week. I wanted to kind of drain my body and clean it, because I know before we went in [Fassbender’s character David] has been taking care of us, and changing our diapers and washing us probably, y’know, for two years.

[MF] [Shakes head, grinning]

[NR] No? What did you do?

[MF] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, “looked after you.”

[Guy Pearce] In a very special kind of way…

[MF] Very special!

[NR] I wanted to kind of drain my body a kind of bit, I dunno, I had this idea I was gonna look very… everything was going to sink in [gestures to face], but it didn’t really happen. But it’s hard to imagine, what it is to be sleeping for two years, but we talked about trying to… how groggy are we, how aware are we about what’s around us? And when you try different things, yelling “we’re here!”, “am I awake?” It’s kind of difficult, we tried it in different versions with Ridley [Scott].

[LMG] Yeah, Ridley said it was that… we were intaking proteins and such instantly, you’re cold, I ended up drinking a quart of milk over the course of a few minutes. And you were throwing it up, lemonade wasn’t it?

[NR] I was.

[LMG] Milk doesn’t bother you.

[NR] No, that was something really disgusting they gave me, remember – the kind of fluid?

[GP] Not milk of magnesia?

[Q] Over the course of the production there was so much secrecy around this. All the speculation happens, there are all these rumors which start getting thrown around online. I would imagine you were probably aware of some of them, probably laughing at some of them. Are there any favorites that stick out in your mind?

[MF] We were trying to create them. The ones we invented were really…

[NR] He was working really hard, to make this…

[MF] A love story! There is a love story.

[NR] Between a robot, and…

[aquote]There’s a love story, between the robot David and Doctor Shaw[/aquote]

[MF] There is a love story, between the robot David and Doctor Shaw, which will be through the next installment.

[NR] The very misleading rumors! Never gonna happen!

[MF] The child’s gonna be half-child, half-robot.

[GP] Has your head been reattached? Or is it just…?

[MF] We’re not sure.

[NR] It’s based on a true story. And actually, I heard a while, “so are you Ripley’s mother?” That was one thing people were asking me, and I was like “I’m not sure.” And this thing that nobody dies in the movie! [Logan] started that.

[LMG] Yeah, I had this reporter going for a while, that nobody dies. They weren’t sure of it after that, they called back and said “I want to make sure, nobody dies?”

[NR] Really disappointed: a Ridley Scott movie and nobody dies?!

[LMG] A big first!

[Q] Michael, did you relate to Data from Star Trek, playing David?

[MF] I guess… he wasn’t one of the ones that I was thinking of when I was putting it together, but you’re the second person that asked so obviously there’s something of him in there. He was probably in and around the ether somewhere: all robots came out to play!

[GP] Some plagiarism in there.

[MF] Absolutely! Stealing left, right and center. But no, it was kind of David Bowie – The Man Who Fell To Earth – Sean Young – Blade Runner – Lawrence of Arabia of course, Peter O’Toole, and Dirk Bogarde, and Greg Louganis. That kind of combo, put all those things together and David came out of that.

[Q] Guy, obviously there was a lot of secrecy around your role. How did you find it in the build-up, the fact you had to almost detach yourself from the promotional bit, that [TED talk] viral that was out. How did you find that all, the process, rather than a normal film?

[aquote]They threw a hood over me every time I walked off the stage[/aquote]

[GP] Well, it wasn’t difficult: I don’t have any problems not talking about a film. Y’know, “we need you to not say this” – great! They did throw a hood over me every time I walked from one stage to another.

[NR] You looked like something weird from Star Wars!

[GP] In case any of you guys were hanging off a fence trying to take photos or something. So I kept getting lost or going to the wrong place. But no, it was fine, really it was a quick process for me, because these guys shot for about three or four months or something altogether, and I really just came in for a couple of weeks in the middle and went “wow, what a fun ride this feels like” and then I left. And then, y’know, there were some questions back and forth between myself and the Fox marketing team going, well, what exactly are we saying, what do you not want to say? So it was just about clarifying that, I suppose. But no, no real difficulty in keeping secrets.

[MF] I love the fact that [Guy’s character] Weyland’s wandering aimlessly around Pinewood lot, appearing in various films. Various films with Weyland in the back!

[GP] Exactly, I’m in Snow White, I’m in the Johnny Depp movie.

[NR] Dark Shadows, yeah, I actually saw you in that!

[GP] I am the dark shadow!

[Q] Michael, the whole lead-up where they’re showing David whiling away his time: how much of that was written into it, how much did you add to it – the bicycle, shooting baskets, certain movies…?

[MF] Yeah, that was a lot of fun. The basketball stuff was all in there, and I think that’s a nice little recognition of Alien. And the hair-dying was my idea, so that was pretty cool, I was happy to see that that got stuck in, working on my highlights and watching Lawrence of Arabia.

[GP] Lawrence of Arabia was always in, wasn’t it.

[MF] Yeah, that was always in, that was in the script, he had this thing about Lawrence. So that was it, most of it was there: the idea of him wandering around the ship, and then of course we got to see him learning the language because that’s gonna be revealed later. So pretty much all of what was there, and then it was just a matter of just fleshing out bits and pieces.

[GP] What about picking up the little speck of something?

[MF] Well that was actually… Ridley said, “I thought, y’know, it would be like a button or something, like he checks the surface of the ship for dust.” I was like, that’s interesting… of course I didn’t want to do exactly what he said, so I picked up something from the floor. [laughs] So those little things, it’s great like that. Because y’know, Ridley’s really good at just giving you a flavor of something, rather than a direction. It’s like, “I thought your character might possess this object” and you’re, like, oh wow, okay, cool, that’s interesting.

[GP] How do I incorporate that in?

[MF] Yeah, totally.

[NR] How do I do a version of what Ridley said, not what he said…

[MF] Exactly.

[Q] Noomi, you’re playing a female role in a series that has had some really memorable female roles. How do you feel about playing that kind of role?

[NR] When they told me that he wanted to work with me, just that, it took a while for me to really believe it and to realize that it’s happening. And then, when I got to read the script, and when he told me about this character, it felt like a great honor and I was terrified at the same time. But I think, as soon as you start to work, get into it, you have to kind of push away everything around you and not think about people’s expectations and what’s gone before, and that it’s Ridley Scott.

I think you just have to find your focus and find your own way of doing it, because if you’re trying to satisfy people and trying to do something that will fit in in the line of his fantastic heroines, it’s gonna be impossible to work. So I kinda had to ignore all that, and force myself into some kind of protecting bubble of work. [To Michael] And you helped me! You took care of me in the bubble!

[MF] I was the bubble!

[Q] You all have some great scenes with David in there, and I’m curious in the acting side, how do you approach this character as a robot – not as Michael, fellow-actor.

[NR] He is a robot!

[Q] The scene with Logan was really great…

[MF] That was fun, we filmed that pretty early, that was like the first week or so.

[LMG] Yeah.

[GP] The drinking speech?

[MF] Yeah.

[Q] Does it change anything, the way you interact with someone, knowing you have to interact with them as a robot?

[NR] I think the first impulse is to try to read or analyze things from an emotional level; think “what does he mean, what is really going on inside him?” And then you have to remind yourself, he’s a computer, he’s hollow – he’s not emotional, there’s not a heart in there.

[MF] Love story, love story… [Laughs]

[NR] So I think that, even for Shaw, I think there’s a point where she really hates him, and is really upset about what she thinks… I think she thinks that he has something to do with this. But then, I think she corrects herself, by reminding herself that it’s just a waste of energy because he’s a computer, it’s a hard-disk. And then in the end it’s almost like she feels sorry for him, for not having any emotions, and no soul; you’re just a robot, you’ll never understand us.

[aquote]We talked about bigotry and racism, the inevitable disdain for synthetic life[/aquote]

[LMG] I think also, the opposite – which I had never seen – I mean, you have trauma with robots in some of the other movies in the franchise. But we kind of talked about bigotry and racism, y’know, the inevitable synthetic life there’ll be the inevitable disdain for it. I liked that approach, I mean, I didn’t approach Holloway as a bigot or racist, but I liked this sense of “he’s beneath me”; constantly, no matter how much smarter he probably was than Holloway, or maybe even available emotionally on a synthetic level, he was still beneath him. That was fun, I don’t think we’ve seen that before.

[MF] See what happens when you think like that…

[LMG] That’s right, it affected me awfully. I’m a horrible human being! [Laughs]

[MF] That was one of the bits that freaked me most in the film, when you look in the mirror and there’s like [the tendril]

[LMG] Dammit, David!

[MF] That little worm is in your eye, it’s really well done, I love that. We were talking afterwards, you were like “It’s nothing, it’s nothing. I’m sure it will be fine.”

[LMG] I’ve had worse!

[MF] A little worm in my eye… it’s gonna be okay.

[LMG] A nasty STD, what the hell did she…?! [Laughter] Dammit David!

[Q] You’re thinking yourself into a different world, and it’s a world that’s been in a few films before – big, important films that we all know – were you approaching this film through them, or mostly through talking to Ridley, or something you’re bringing yourself?

[GP] Oh, I think talking to Ridley. I mean, we’re all obviously aware of what it is we’ve come onboard, but I think funnily enough it’s a very different perspective from the outside than from, y’know, the inner world. As soon as you start talking to Ridley – and I personally felt a little intimidated by the thought of this, not so much because of the history of the other films but because we know of Ridley’s prowess – but as soon as I started talking to him on the phone, that immediately goes out the window. You just immediately get into creative discussions about what it is you’re creating, you’re just on another job and you’re going through the steps you normally go through – I’d drive home from work occasionally and go “wow, this is really cool”, or when you first turn up on set and see those amazing sets.

But I think, also because the script and this particular film is so individual in a way. I mean, there’s obviously the connection with other films, but it really is so much more than just prequel. It delves into ideas that go far beyond what that first Alien film did, so I think it’s very easy to go “well, this now is the world of Prometheus and this is very, very particular,” And I think I can probably speak for everybody that, once you start working with Ridley, you’re reminded of what it is that you’re doing in the present. So I personally didn’t feel at all like… even though, really, Weyland is really the guy that we’ve heard about in the other films, I didn’t feel at all that I was living through those past cinematic experiences.

[NR] But also I think that the sets and, what [production designer] Arthur Max and the crew created, is just for us to step into, to have real things to work with and react from. That was incredible, because it gave so much. I remember once when Ridley came to me and was like “come on, I’m gonna show you something” and he opened the door to the room to the big head.

[GP] And it was Michael! [Laughter]

[NR] And the love story started there… the head! No, but I remember I got tears in my eyes, because it was there for real, and there’s some sort of cruel, savage beauty that they’ve created in this weird kind of, I dunno, world.

[MF] And he’s so enthusiastic, I mean Ridley’s so enthusiastic.

[NR] Oh yeah, he’s like a child.

[MF] He is like a kid. I love watching him on-set, because it’s infectious and he’s inspiring.

[NR] The small worms, he was like [gasps] “look at this, look at this, beautiful huh!” And it was, like, “yeah!”

[LMG] He also put cameras on us, so we became kinda the cameramen as well. And they built these sets – six walls – and all the fear and awe is real, of course, but I love kinda exploring the sets and using the flashlight. They’d turn the lights off on these damned things. It’s all real, they’re massive.

[GP] They’re really incredible, aren’t they. They’re so solid, they didn’t feel like sets. As I said, I came in late, so they’d all been going and I didn’t get to walk around with everyone else and experience the newness of it with everyone else. And I was going “is it dumb to ask if this is real… [feigns confidence] oh yeah, no, it’s amazing.” So it was incredible, the three-dimensional nature of those sets. It’s certainly not like when we were on Neighbours and they used to wobble when you closed the door.

[NR] And they were so big, you could really get lost.

[GP] Yeah. I mean, didn’t he extend one of those stages? Whatever the biggest stage is on Pinewood, he got them to rebuild another, y’know, end of it to make it however much bigger. So it really was quite enormous, a whole world in there.

[Q] In the Alien franchises, a lot of the actors talk about their first time seeing some of the creatures, and how the use of practical effects and costuming makes them terrifying of those things. Did you guys feel that way, about the monsters you each dealt with during the film?

[aquote]It gets into you, I was having such disturbed dreams, nightmares[/aquote]

[NR] Well, when I saw my baby for the first time. I was really… it was there, it was really happening. And, again, Ridley was, like, “it’s pretty, huh?” And I was, like, “yeah, it’s kinda cute.” It’s weird. Because in close-ups, you’re standing there looking at the thing, and it’s very real – it’s something quite spooky – it gets into you, I was dreaming such disturbed dreams, y’know, nightmares.

[LMG] You were very close with it.

[NR] Yeah, I was really close with that.

[GP] And it was animatronic, that thing, wasn’t it?

[NR] Yeah, it was moving!

[MF] Remember those guys, “I’ve got it’s left leg, you’ve got the right” and there’s the head as well; it was like three guys going [mimes frantically operating puppet]. Eyes blinking, and the head was going, and you’re screaming!

Don’t forget to check out our interview with Prometheus director Ridley Scott, as well as our interview with Damon Lindelof and co-writer Jon Spaihts for more on Prometheus’ challenging conception. We’ve also got a full review of Prometheus here!

Slashgear’S Best Tech Of 2013

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