Welcome back to a new school year! I’m here to report on the hottest tech news around.  This week, the patent war between Apple and Samsung heats up, HTC loses $40 million, and Sony is ready to release a new phone.

                First off, AT&T will no longer offer subsidized pricing on tablets.  This means that you will no longer have to sign a two-year contract with the company. The drawback is that it will be more expensive with no commitment pricing.  The data plans have decreased by $5. You can get 250MB for $15, 3GB for $30 or 5GB for $50.

                The cloud-gaming service, OnLive has sold its assets to an unnamed company.  It had to lay off most of its staff, but they promise no interruptions for service.  HTC had invested $40 million in the company and has lost off of this money. 

                Sony has revealed the Sony Xperia SL. It is just like the Xperia S, but with a new 1.7Ghz Snapdragon S3 processor chip and is upgradable to Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich.  The Xperia S was criticized for being sluggish; the new processor should fix this issue.

                Wednesday Samsung will be holding an event to announce the Samsung Galaxy Note II.  It has a teaser trailer on its official YouTube page.  It is rumored that this phone will have a 5.5-inch screen with a quad-core processor.

                During the entire summer, Apple and Samsung have been fighting about who stole what.  Apple has sued Samsung for stealing designs from the iPhone and iPad.  Apple has had several previous employees testify that when given a Samsung device, they thought it could have been designed by Apple.  Studies were also shown that Samsung performed tests to see if people could tell the difference between a Samsung tablet and an iPad.

                Apple has now been given permission to look at all of Samsung’s devices and choose which designs were stolen.  Apple even had to share its prototypes of the first iPhone.

                I would like to announce that I will be using the SpecTech Blog for a special video series.  For this semester I will do a Top 5 Countdown of my favorite video games of all time. I will post the first video next Thursday. You can watch the countdown only at vsuspectech.blogspot.com

                My question of the week is, “Do you ever get confused between Samsung and Apple devices?” Email your answers to smsetser@valdosta.edu or post on vsuspectech.blogspot.com/