BlackBerry's Priv Puzzles the Tech World

BlackBerry on Friday released its Priv smartphone, its first Android-based device. The Android 5.1.1 Lollipop slider is driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor and an Adreno 418 GPU. It's stocked with 3 GB of low-power RAM and 32 GB of storage. There's an 18-MP shooter on its backside and a 2-MP chat cam on its face. BlackBerry tactfully denied the existence of the device, with CEO John Chen famously saying that the company wouldn't release an Android-based device unless it found a way to secure it properly.

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Xbox Gamers Get to Replay 104 Older Titles on Xbox One

Microsoft on Monday announced that 104 catalog titles for the Xbox 360 will be fully compatible and playable on its "new" Xbox One video game system, which hit store shelves two years ago. The list of Xbox One backward-compatible games includes notable hits such as the complete Gears of Wars catalog, Assassin's Creed II, Fallout 3, Borderlands and Castle Crashers, among many others. These games will be playable on the Xbox One beginning on Nov. 12.

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Lytro's VR Camera System Promises Unprecedented Immersion

Lytro last week announced its Immerge concept, a virtual reality camera system that promises to plop people right in the center of an experience the company calls "six degrees of freedom." Lytro's Immerge harnesses the potential of light field technology, the same tech behind the clandestine Magic Leap augmented reality headset. Light field enables Immerge to capture data from all points, and viewpoints, inside any given volume of space, the company said.

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Why Tablets Are Tanking

Boy, we really have gone full circle on tablets -- and not just once. Back when the Windows tablets first came to market, a whole bunch of us predicted it wouldn't be long before they replaced all of the notebooks. I don't think they even made it to 10 percent before the tablet market collapsed, and the pre-existing forms reclaimed their shares. Then the iPad launched, and a whole bunch of new folks claimed that tablets were the future and laptops were dead. Now Apple is reporting a year-over-year decline at 20 percent. What happened?

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Gadget Ogling: An Emotional Keyboard, a Puzzling Phone, and Exquisite Headphones

To communicate online in 2015 is to have at least a passing awareness of emoji -- the colorful symbols that are endemic in social media and text messages. Inputting emoji into a post or message from a computer is often awkward, though this item might help. EmojiWorks has a physical keyboard which, at the touch of a modifier -- think ctrl, alt or command -- you can use to type emoji. A skintone changer lets you bring each icon in line with recent diversity adjustments to the various emoji images. Users can choose 47, 94 or 120 emoji to input.

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Now Facebook Users Can Tell Their Music Stories

Facebook on Thursday announced Music Stories, a feature in its iPhone app that lets users post links to music they like with comments. Clicking the link will launch a 30-second preview of the music, which is streamed from either Apple Music or Spotify. Listeners then can purchase the music from the service or save it to their account there. Facebook plans to add other streaming services to the feature. There was no word on whether it will offer Music Stories in its Android or Windows Phone apps.

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No Time to Respond to Email? Let Google Do It

Google this week unveiled Smart Reply for Gmail on iOS and Android. It uses machine intelligence and neural networks to suggest up to three possible responses for incoming email, based on the content of those emails. The system learns from users' responses to suggestions to fine-tune its offerings. It has a repository of 20,000 Smart Replies that will continue to grow with time, said Google spokesperson Emma Ogiemwanye. Smart Reply will be available in English in Google Play and Apple's App Store.

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