TrendForce Reports Q1 Smartphone Shipments: Samsung Solidifies Number 1 Spot

We love studies here at Android Headlines, and a new one from TrendForce is out showing that global smartphone shipments totaled 291.2 million units during the first quarter of 2015 – this is a 9.2-percent drop over the prior quarter.  They attribute the decrease based on the decline of smartphone demand in China, one of the largest markets…along with India.  Although they expect China’s sales to rebound, the current decline reflects a slowdown of China’s overall economy, lack of subsidy increases by the domestic carriers, the success of the iPhone in the first quarter and the depreciation of the euros.

Breaking down the numbers shows that Samsung has solidified the number one spot and pushed Apple further back to number two and China’s own Huawei comes in third place.  Samsung dominated with a 27.8-percent of the market share, based largely on the early success of their new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge models…analysts are estimating that Samsung could sell over 55 million Galaxy S6s in 2015.  The Galaxy S6 Edge has created more interest than Samsung originally thought – bringing it out as a companion model to the regular Galaxy S6.  The Galaxy S6 Edge has a dual-curved display that really sets it off from other smartphones, but with a $100 premium over the base Galaxy S6 model, Samsung was just hoping to draw people in with its unusually ‘cool’ looks.  It turns out the people are willing to spend the extra $100 and sales have become about 50/50 with Samsung finding itself in a position of running out of the curved-displays.

Samsung Galaxy S6 (Black, 32GB)

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53 Historians Weigh In on Barack Obama’s Legacy

“It’s a fool’s errand you’re involved in,” warned Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon Wood when approached recently by this magazine to predict Barack Obama’s historical legacy. “We live in a fog, and historians decades from now will tell their society what was happening in 2014. But we don’t know the future. No one in 1952, for example, could have predicted the reputation of Truman a half-century or so later.”

Wood is right, of course. Historians are experts on the past, not the future. But sometimes the wide-angle perspective they inhabit can be useful in understanding the present. And so, on the eve of Obama’s penultimate State of the Union address, we invited a broad range of historians — academic and popular — to play a game.

Over the past few weeks, New York asked more than 50 historians to respond to a broad questionnaire about how Obama and his administration will be viewed 20 years from now. After the day-to-day crises and flare-ups and legislative brinkmanship are forgotten, what will we remember? What, and who, will have mattered most? What small piece of legislation (or executive inaction) will be seen by future generations as more consequential than today’s dominant news stories? What did Obama miss about America? What did we (what will we) miss about him?

Almost every respondent wrote that the fact of his being the first black president will loom large in the historical narrative — though they disagreed in interesting ways. Many predict that what will last is the symbolism of a nonwhite First Family; others, the antagonism Obama’s blackness provoked; still others, the way his racial self-consciousness constrained him. A few suggested that we will care a great deal less about his race generations from now — just as John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism hardly matters to current students of history. Across the board, Obamacare was recognized as a historic triumph (though one historian predicted that, with its market exchanges, it may in retrospect be seen as illiberal and mark the beginning of the privatization of public health care). A surprising number of respondents argued that his rescue of the economy will be judged more significant than is presently acknowledged, however lackluster the recovery has felt. There was more attention paid to China than isis (Obama’s foreign policy received the most divergent assessments), and considerable credit was given to the absence of a major war or terrorist attack, along with a more negative assessment of its price — the expansion of the security state, drones and all. The contributors tilted liberal — that’s academia, no surprise — but we made an effort to create at least a little balance with conservative historians. Their responses often echoed those from the far left: that a president elected on a promise to unite the country instead extended the power of his office in alarming, unprecedented ways. Here, we have published a small fraction of the answers we found most thought-provoking, along with essays by Jonathan Chait, our national-affairs columnist, and Christopher Caldwell, whom we borrowed from The Weekly Standard. A full version of all the historians’ answers can be found here.

“Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter,” Obama told his Cabinet last month, shortly after his surprise announcement about restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba. As it happens, this was exactly what a few of our respondents had nominated as the best remaining action Obama could take for his legacy. Before going to press, we let them revise their answers. There will certainly be more interesting stuff, of Obama’s design and not, before January 2017 that will date this project over and over. History is funny that way.

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

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Hitler's last 24 hours: I want to be a beautiful corpse, said Eva amid a frenzy of sex and drinking

A mesmerizing new book gives a minute-by-minute account of Hitler’s last day in his Berlin bunker exactly 70 years ago. On Saturday, in our first extract, we revealed how he toasted his wedding to Eva Braun before preparing for death. Today, we tell how an orgy of drunkenness and debauchery broke out among his henchmen as the Russians closed in.

7am, Sunday, April 29, 1945

The people of Berlin are emerging from their overcrowded underground bunkers in search of food. Armin Lehmann, 16, working as a Hitler Youth courier, is horrified by the desperation of ordinary citizens, many of whom are starving. Recently, he saw two men hacking with a knife at a horse. It had been injured by shrapnel, but was still alive.

10am

Another Hitler Youth runner appears in the upper bunker to report that Russian tanks are now about 500m from the Reich Chancellery. [Both the upper and lower bunkers, where Hitler and a few staff have been living since January, are below the Reich Chancellery. The Fuhrer spends most of his time in the lower one — known as the Fuhrerbunker — which is protected by a 10ft-deep concrete roof.]

10.30am

In his office in the upper bunker, the monocled General Krebs is on the phone to army HQ in Berlin. He’s told the German defense is collapsing on all fronts. Then the line suddenly goes dead: the balloon that supports radio-telephone communications has been shot down.

All telephone contact between Berlin and the outside world has just ended. From now on, the Hitler Youth runners will have to risk their lives several times a day as they dodge across Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin’s central street, taking messages between army HQ and the Fuhrerbunker.

‘It was a nightmare . . . a game of Russian Roulette,’ 16-year-old Armin Lehmann recalled. ‘Those who stepped out from cover were taking their life in their hands.

‘At best, they’d get a mouthful of the constant cloud of phosphorus smoke and poisonous petrol from the incendiaries; at worst, they’d be sliced down by a Russian rocket. Wilhelmstrasse stank with the smell of scorched bodies.’

Boys who refuse to follow orders are strung up as an example to others. Only a couple of days ago, Lehmann was briefly arrested for staring at the body of a boy — ‘he can’t have been more than 13’ — who’d been hanged from a post with a length of clothes-line.

Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute

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Tips For Performing Pull Ups The Right Way

No matter what your motivation for wanting to engage in muscle building, you'll reap considerable benefits from it. Doing it the right way is very important to avoiding injuries and keeping your routine going. Use the advice in the following article to find a great routine for you that'll have you looking and feeling great.

In order to build proper muscle, it's very important that you eat an appropriate diet. Your body needs the proper nutrients as well as enough calories in order to provide the energy your muscles need for them to rebuild after an intense workout. Your meals should've the proper amount of protein and carbohydrates.

When trying to build more muscle, you'll need to eat more in general. Increase your food intake to the amount of calories that'll produce a weight gain of one pound per week. Consider the ways you might increase your calories and protein intake, then reconsider your approach if you don’t put on any weight in 14 days.

From 0 to 30 Pull Ups: Guide on reaching 30 pull ups

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The Look of Love Is in the Dog’s Eyes

Those big brown eyes gaze at you, deeply. Your heart leaps. You caress, murmuring sweet nothings. And as those big browns remain fixed on you, the tail wags.

Devoted dog. Besotted owner. That continuous loop of loving reinforcement may begin with the dog’s gaze, according to a new report in Science.

Japanese researchers found that dogs who trained a long gaze on their owners had elevated levels of oxytocin, a hormone produced in the brain that is associated with nurturing and attachment, similar to the feel-good feedback that bolsters bonding between parent and child. After receiving those long gazes, the owners’ levels of oxytocin increased, too.

The dog’s gaze cues connection and response in the owner, who will reward the dog by gazing, talking and touching, all of which helps solder the two, the researchers said. They suggest that dogs became domesticated in part by adapting to a primary human means of contact: eye-to-eye communication.

And when researchers gave dogs extra oxytocin through a nasal spray, the female dogs (though not the males) gazed at their owners even longer, which in turn boosted the owners’ oxytocin levels.

Choostix Biskies Real Chicken Dog Treat, 1 kg (Jar)

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3 Ways To Write LinkedIn Posts That Turn Into Career Opportunities

Last year, LinkedIn announced that anyone (not just people deemed as “influencers”) could publish on its blog platform, allowing every professional the opportunity to get his or her voice and work out there on the web.

Publishing on LinkedIn has many benefits (career counselor Lily Zhang wrote a great article about this), including being able to really engage with your audience and having the opportunity to have your work promoted to a wide readership.

However, like any sort of creative outlet, writing on LinkedIn is a lot easier said than done. You can’t just draft any old thing, slap it up there, and expect it to boost your career. You have to put some care into it. And while some of the same rules for writing good blog posts apply to writing good LinkedIn posts (communications expert Alex Honeysett has some tips on that here), there are a few special things you have to keep in mind.

After taking a stab at the platform over the past few weeks, I’ve discovered several important steps to successful LinkedIn posting.

1. Pick a Purpose—That Furthers Your Personal Brand

Unlike other publications, which often have topic guidelines or restrictions, being able to post your own content on LinkedIn gives you the freedom to write about whatever you’d like. But unlike a personal blog, you’re not setting up a theme for yourself from the start. In my experience, this can be a blessing and a curse; if you’re not careful, your posts will end up seeming random, and your followers won’t come to know you as an expert on any given topic.

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