Sprint’s board has recommended that its shareholders vote in favor of the SoftBank transaction, although a special committee of the board is taking a long hard look at the Dish Network bid to see if it could be turned into a higher bid. The Sprint stockholders will be voting on the SoftBank bid on June 12th. While on its face, the Dish bid would seem to have more value. But the Japanese telco is planning on injecting Sprint with $ 8 billion in capital if it succeeds in buying the carrier.

You might ask why the Japanese based firm would allow Sprint to talk to the company that has a rival bid for the carrier. The answer lies in the confidence that the Japanese firm has in its offer. According to a statement released Monday by SoftBank President Ron Fisher, the company has great confidence in the value of its bid and is hoping to move quickly to close the deal. In other words, SoftBank hopes that by allowing Sprint to talk to Dish, the board of the mobile operator will evaluate the Japanese company’s offer as being superior to the one made by Dish and move quickly to close the deal.

source: AllThingsD

Nokia has done a great job drumming up demand for the Nokia Lumia 928. The recent focus on low-light photography has allowed the Finnish manufacturer to produce snappers with apertures perfectly suited to take pictures in low-light without a flash. And the optical image stabilizer on the Nokia Lumia 928 camera makes it look like a video shot with the phone attached to a remote control chopper, was using a tripod when it was not. Now Verizon has a high-end Windows Phone 8 model to call its own, just as the Nokia Lumia 920 has been an exclusive for AT&T.

It should be interesting to see the breakdown of Verizon’s second quarter sales once the period ends, to see if the Nokia Lumia 928 will be able to take some business away from the Apple iPhone 5 and the just released Samsung Galaxy S4. And don’t forget the BlackBerry Z10.

The Black Nokia Lumia 928 ships in 7 to 10 days from Radio Shack

source: Verizon via RadioShack

A white version of the phone can be seen near the beginning of the video. J-Lo is on the middle of a text conversation with Pitbull, who has sent her a video of activity taking place on the beach. The song is called “Live it up” and is quickly approaching 1,000,000 views which makes this a great ad for the Nokia Lumia 920.

Whether you’re a fan of Jennifer Lopez, Pitbull or the Nokia Lumia 920, you can watch the music video below.

source: YouTube via WMPoweruser

Yahoo announces a press event for Monday

On Thursday, we told you that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is fixated on buying hosting site Tumblr for $ 1 billion. According to people close to the situation, Yahoo’s board is going to get together on Sunday (that’s why they earn the big bucks) to discuss an all-cash $ 1.1 billion offer for Tumblr. Sources in tune with Mayer’s thinking say that Tumblr will be the property that Yahoo will use as the base for the company going forward, attracting the young and hip crowd to what has been an aging platform.

The deal has apparently been agreed to by Tumblr although nothing is set in stone until both sides make the announcement. That will come as soon as Monday assuming Yahoo’s board rubber stamps the acquisition. Mayer turned to Tumblr about 6 weeks ago and its strength in mobile is another reason why the executive is so enthused about the company. According to comScore, 25% of the site’s visitors come from a mobile device.

After the acquisition, Tumblr CEO David Karp will continue to run the business and will be given the room to grow the business with a four year contract. Meanwhile, Yahoo has scheduled a major press event for Monday at which the Tumblr acquisition could be announced. But Bloomberg is reporting that the press event will be held to announce an update to the Flickr photo-sharing site.

source: AllThingsD, Bloomberg

More money was spent on games for iOS in Q1 than spent on games for dedicated handheld game players

Games represented 40% of the downloads coming from both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the first quarter. The top grossing game on both iOS and Android was the same title, Puzzle & Dragons. Rounding out the top five iOS games was Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga, Hay Day and The Simpsons: Tapped Out. For Android, after Puzzle & Dragons, the top five games consisted of Everybody Cha Cha Cha followed by Windrunner, Candy Crush Saga and Million Arthur.

According to the report,while iOS and Google Play saw Q1 increases in downloads, consumer spending and install base market share, all of these categories declined for handheld dedicated game players.

source: AppAnnie via FierceMobile

Now, the company is starting to change its mind about the problem with less than expected user available memory:

“We appreciate this issue being raised and we will improve our communications,” Samsung spokesperson said for CNET UK. “Also, we are reviewing the possibility to secure more memory space through further software optimisation.

“Samsung is committed to listening to our customers and responding to their needs as part of our innovation process.”

The dramatic lack of storage space comes from the much heavier TouchWiz interface that comes with the Galaxy S4. Many users point out that Samsung has introduced a ton of new features like gestures and eye detection that not a lot of people would use. Yet those exact features take up a lot of the internal storage on the device.

It is also true, though, that Samsung is the only company of the big ones that releases its flagship with a microSD card expansion slot. Apple and HTC for instance do not support expandable storage.

source: CNET UK

The LG Intuition offers secure apps for business use

Now, LG is offering something similar to KNOX on the Verizon branded LG Intuition. Called P&B Virtualization, the phone’s OS is basically cut in half with one half dedicated to a secure, IT controlled environment for business apps. The other half is reserved for personal applications. P&B Virtualization is the result of LG’s partnership with VMware which is the leading firm globally in virtualization and cloud infrastructure.

Perfect for a company that has a BYOD environment, the LG Intuition running with P&B Virtualization is like having two devices in one. The system allows the best of both worlds by letting the device run business apps securely at work, but allows the same person to have complete freedom when using the device for play. The Korean based manufacturer says that it will add P&B Virtualization to more of its models in order to meet demand for a secure smartphone that can be used in secure business environments.

The LG Intuition is $ 149.99 at Verizon, with a signed two-year contract. The device features a 5 inch screen with a resolution of 768 x 1280.

source: LG