First smartphone to meet TCO standards for environmentally friendly and socially responsible manufacturing

Samsung has announced that its latest smartphone, the Galaxy S4, has become the world's first to win TCO certification. The award from TCO Development, an organization focusing on sustainability in IT products, intends to showcase products that meet standards for environmentally-friendly, economically viable and socially responsible manufacturing.

Today's press release gives details of the conditions Samsung met in each category --

In the social category, Samsung demonstrated that it is committed to socially responsible manufacturing and is compliant with International Labour Organization and United Nation conventions. In the environmental category, it was found that the GALAXY S4 was free from many hazardous materials such as nickel, beryllium, and mercury which, if present, would have severely restricted its potential to be recycled at the end its lifecycle. In terms of economic viability, the power efficiency of the charger was praised, as was the smartphone’s industrial design which boosts reliability. 

This isn't the first Samsung product to be awarded accolades for its environmental credentials. Last year the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Ace Duo were awarded PAS 2050 certification by the Carbon Trust. Before that, it played up the eco-friendly Samsung Replenish, which was available on Sprint and Boost Mobile.

It's also the second such award to be given to the Galaxy S4 -- Samsung says its new phone was also awarded UL's ECOLOGO certification.

Multiple users can show split the bill for shared storage costs

The latest entrant in the cloud storage arena, Copy, is increasing the amount of free storage it offers to try and pull users away from other services. Following the announcement by Google that it will be unifying its free storage across services, Copy is now giving all free accounts 15GB of storage to start off with, up from 5GB previously. If you're not familiar with Copy, it also grabbed some attention for having a generous referral policy, which gives 5GB of extra storage to both the referrer and the referee with no limits on the extra storage that can be obtained. Copy also does not have file size limits, another plus over its competitors.

Along with the announcement of increases in base storage, Copy is also rolling out a feature it's calling "Fair Storage" that helps split the cost of shared folders between the users that access them. For example, if four users are sharing a 20GB Copy folder, each one will only pay for 5GB of that storage, rather than each paying for all 20GB every month. It's a system that makes sense logically but isn't the way that other companies are approaching shared folders.

Copy certainly has a lot of good ideas, but as we've seen in the past it can be hard for new challengers in the cloud storage space to come in and challenge the likes of Dropbox. Even Google's own Drive product has struggled to catch on for the average user. We'll see if the seriously interesting storage incentives from Copy can help them get a foothold.

More: Copy

Lots of great new features, but this may not be the unified messaging service some hoped for

We've heard a whole lot about "Hangouts" as a headline feature of Google+ since its launch, but Google is repurposing that branding today for its latest group chat service. There was a whole lot of crazy speculation and expectation leading up to Google I/O about a unified messaging platform from Google, and unfortunately Hangouts just isn't that service quite yet. As if Hangouts coming to phones as an update to the Google Talk app wasn't a good indication, this is more of an instant messaging client then an all-encompassing messaging service.

That being said, if you and the people you talk to most are all-in with Google, this update just gave you a whole bunch of new features. Read on with us past the break for a little introduction to Hangouts, Google's next step in messaging.

More: Android Central @ Google I/O 2013

To build great apps, you need great tools. The folks at Mountain View are giving us those tools

After this morning's epic three-hour Keynote event, it was just a quick trip next door to see Xavier Ducrohet and Tor Noybe give what is always one of the most popular developer sessions of the conference -- What's New in Android Developer Tools. 

If you were paying attention during the Keynote, we got a quick look at Android Studio, seeing how the new IDE can make the life of a hard working Android dev easier. Based on IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio is a free and open source IDE specifically designed for building Android apps. Complete with templates, wizards, and some awesome WYSIWYG-style layout editing, it looks like someone at Mountain View is very serious about devs getting the tools they need.

Eclipse isn't gone, and in fact there's still plenty that has not made it's way to Android Studio just yet. But clearly, this is the future of Android app development. It's great to see the tools developers need to build the next set of great apps! If you're a developer or just want to have a look at things, visit the link below to check out an Earl Access Preview of Android Studio.

Getting Started with Android Studio

Keep up to 1,000 of your own PDF and EPUB files in the cloud for free

Caught up in all of the hullabaloo around the keynote, Google Play Books received a notable update in the Play Store to not only bring new UI elements but also a new way to view your own documents. First up is the design, which follows many of Google's latest design principles with a new left edge slide-in navigation panel and high contrast blue and white design. The interface on Play Books has always been simple, but it can't get much cleaner than it is now. You can "Read Now" (remember you can "Listen Now" in Play Music), view "My Library" or go "Shop". Very simple.

The big back-end feature that was enabled by this update is user uploads, which lets you now upload from the web (at play.google.com/books/uploads) or directly from Google Drive any PDF or EPUB document of your choice. Those documents uploaded on the web are then available for sync and download on your phone or tablet to read at any time. Users can store up to 1,000 documents at once with the service, and uploaded documents have their page position, bookmarks and notes completely synced across devices.

Play Books may not be on of the fanciest or most talked-about Google apps today, but these are huge improvements in usability that make the entire Android platform (and Google ecosystem) more compelling.

Google and Sprint team up again to allow three of the most popular devices to have Wallet access

Not everything makes it into the Google I/O keynote, but that doesn't mean it's not still important. As a tweet from the official Google Wallet account, it announced that the Sprint Galaxy S4, HTC One and Galaxy Note 2 (also on U.S. Cellular) will all be given access to the Google Wallet app directly from Google Play. This is pretty big news, as those are likely three of the most high-profile and best selling devices available on Sprint today. The carrier was originally one of the few partners that has stuck with Google through the ups and downs of Wallet, so it's good to see that the two companies are still working together.

Users on any of the three aforementioned devices should be able to grab a direct download of the app from the Play Store, which can be found at the link above. Now all you have to do is find somewhere to actually use those NFC payment abilities.

Source:  Google Wallet (Twitter)

Clear your evening, you'll need in excess of three hours for this one!

If you missed todays mammoth keynote from Google I/O 2013, there's no need to be disheartened. You've got a couple of options. The first -- and one we recommend -- is to hit the Android Central Google I/O portal to catch up on all of the days news. Once you've done that, Google has put the whole thing online for you to watch back at your leisure. 

Be warned though, you'll need to clear your evening. All of it. Or watch it in two parts. The keynote clocks in at well over 3 hours long if you count the Q&A time at the end with Larry Page. Which you should, because it's Larry Page. So, enjoy it, and drop into the comments below and let us know what your favorite part was out of everything you saw today.

Google TV also now moves on to the latest version Chrome, jumps onto the six-week regular Chrome update cycle

Despite being omitted from the 3-hour Google I/O keynote completely, there is some good news coming out of San Francisco for Google TV. Google already pushed out the update to their YouTube app for the platform, but also announced today is the bump up to Android 4.2.2. And, with the jump to the latest version of Android, the latest version of Google Chrome is also on board, with Google TV joining the regular six-week update cycle for Chrome. 

Chrome for Google TV also gets support for hardware based content protection. Simply put, this means that developers have the ability to include premium high definition TV content within web apps for Google TV. 

The good news doesn't end there either. Alongside the software updates Google is also announcing that they have refactored Google TV so that OEM partners can update to future versions of Android in "a matter of weeks rather than months." 

The update to 4.2.2 is expected to roll out to current Google TV devices "in the coming months" with new devices expected to be seen later this year. Great news for the Google TV fans out there that Google continues to push the platform forwards.

Source: Google TV Developers