Before this week's Mobile World Congress 2015 (MWC) in Barcelona, Samsung had its back against the wall. The company reported slumping sales of its flagship smartphone , and many believed its dominance in the smartphone world was coming to an end. But after Samsung's latest smartphone release it's clear that there are plenty of innovative ideas coming from the company.
There's nothing worse than getting hacked. Ask anyone at Sony, which lost an estimated $100 million in the malicious hacks committed against the company last year. Silent Circle, a company founded by Internet security legend Phil Zimmerman, wants to bring those type of hacks to a halt. The company's solution: An end-to-end service that starts with an ultra secure smartphone called the Blackphone 2.
Ripping movies from DVDs may be of questionable legality, but it's not hard to do. Ripping music from CDs is even easier, and less legally gray. So why can't you rip your books into ebooks? Well, Amazon's now got a way for you to do just that—presuming you have a scanner, a wallet, and plenty of time on your hands.
What if you could replenish your phone's battery while you were nowhere near the electrical grid? Sure, there are plenty of external power packs that will do this kind of thing, but what if you also didn't need to recharge those from the grid? Then you'd have the crowdfunded Kraftwerk, a clever charging device that draws its power from gas instead.
In the mobile age, we're largely unfettered by wires, thanks in no small part to Wi-Fi, cellular networking, and the rise of laptops, smartphones, and tablets. But one thin tether keeps us perennially bound: power. Though battery technologies have improved, we still need to charge our devices regularly. So-called "wireless power"—charging or power transmitted to a device without the need to plug that device in—has long been (supposedly) just shy of mainstream adoption.