Paul Lilly
Paul is a seasoned geek who was first seduced into the world of computers and technology by the Commodore 64, and through the years he’s courted a number of OSes and platforms from DOS on up to the latest version of Windows. Having joined the HotHardware team in 2011, Paul is now a mainstay of the site covering the news beat and reviews, and resident wiseguy who keeps the mood light. He’s also an experienced freelance technology writer whose work has appeared in a number of online and print publications.
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
There's no love lost between Google and Apple. Steve Jobs once vowed to destroy Android even if it meant bankrupting Apple, and given his competitive nature, there's every reason to believe he fully meant it. More recently, Apple raked one of Google's hardware partners (Samsung) over the coals by winning a $1 billion...
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After being shunned by Target and Walmart, both of which stopped carrying Amazon's Kindle line because of the small profit margin (and because Amazon is major competitor to their brick-and-mortar business model), Amazon is taking its Kindle Fire tablets to GameStop. The new and used games retailer is more than happy...
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Handset makers have a bad habit of leaving customers in the dark about upcoming Android updates or, at best, offering up vague release schedules. That isn't always the case with Motorola, which just updated its Android 4.1 Jelly Bean roadmap with a few specific dates. It's especially good news for Atrix HD owners, who are next in line to receive...
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Text-to-speech and adjustable font sizes are two features that have been around for years on Kindle devices to help vision-impaired Kindle owners with learning disabilities. Now Amazon is bringing "Voice Guide" and "Explore by Touch" to its standard definition Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD 7" tablets. These two...
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The online game company responsible for Farmville, Mafia Wars, and other online games that clutter your Facebook feed with various requests has an request of its own. Zynga wants Nevada Gaming Control Board to approve is application for online gambling in the U.S., a process that could take up to 18 months. Zynga already offers real-money...
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Kudos to Samsung for not resting on its laurels with what many would consider the best Android smartphone on the market (and you could argue it doesn't need the "Android" qualifier). We're of course talking about the Galaxy S III, and along with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which both T-Mobile and AT&T have pushed out...
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Intel Chief Paul Otellini recently announced that he plans to retire from chipzilla in May 2013, which leaves the world's largest semiconductor player plenty of time for find a replacement. Who will it be? That's the big question that nobody knows the answer to, though Otellini did indicate that it's likely to be...
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Wireless carrier T-Mobile is finally and nearly officially going to start offering the iPhone and other Apple products beginning next year. We say it's "nearly" official because parent company Deutsche Telekom didn't specifically single out the iPhone, but did say that it hammered out an "agreement with Apple to bring products to market together...
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Archos on Thursday announced the retail availability of its new GamePad device, or the "first true Android games console," as the company pitches it. The Android-powered GamePad is a new type of tablet that combines physical gaming button controls and Archos' patented mapping tool with a full Android tablet experience...
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Some of us do it in the dark, others do it with the lights on. Heck, I've even done it in public, more than once. Yes, at some point or another, we all drop our smartphones (what did you think I was talking about?, and it's a little surprising it doesn't happen more often when you think about the number of times it...
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If you ordered and paid for a single iPad tablet but received a box full of five iPads, what would you do? Such is the ethical dilemma a son and his girlfriend found themselves in after the boy's mother ordered him an iPad from Best Buy only for him to receive five of them. Before you say one way or the other, it...
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Finicky investors weren't as high on Apple yesterday as they have been in the past. Apple's share price dropped 6.4 percent on Wednesday, representing the company's biggest single-day drop in four years and shaving $35 billion from its market cap. What gives? That's a good question, and there are no concrete answer to be found, only theories....
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Let's be honest, the time we spend making calls on our smartphones pales in comparison to all the other activities we use it for, like surfing the web, logging into Facebook, streaming music and video, and of course playing games. It's that latter functionality that a startup called Green Throttle wants to tap into...
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The iPhone 5 has been available for two and a half months, and quite frankly, we're surprised it took this long for the first pics of what's supposed to be the inevitable iPhone 5S to appear online. But they're here now, and assuming they're real, you can expect the iPhone 5S to look just like its predecessor. No big surprise there. After...
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You can certainly make the argument that tablets didn't catch AMD or Intel "flat-footed" (and we in fact did make that argument), but at the same time, you have to give companies like Qualcomm credit for being well prepared for the mobile boom that we now find ourselves in. To wit, Qualcomm is now the world's third largest semiconductor player,...
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Your run-of-the-mill smartphone announcement usually involves the same old names, like HTC, Motorola, or Samsung. But one company you probably never heard of is Oppo. That's because Oppo doesn't really have much of a presence in the U.S. market, but it sure is looking to make a grand entrance with its Find 5 Android...
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Netflix went out and scored itself a multi-year licensing agreement that will make it the exclusive U.S. subscription television service for first-run live-action and animated feature films from The Walt Disney Studios, the streaming company announced this week. "Disney and Netflix have shared a long and mutually...
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Nokia on Tuesday added to its Windows Phone lineup by launching the Lumia 620, the third and most affordable device in its range of Windows Phone 8 smartphones. It slides underneath the top-end Lumia 920 (see our review) and mid-range Lumia 820, but unlike those other two, Nokia's entry-level WP8 device aims to offer...
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Just over two months ago, Linus Torvalds released the Linux 3.6 kernel in final form, opting to push it out to the public rather than building what would have been an eighth Release Candidate. At the time, he said he couldn't think of a major reason to do yet another RC. Since then, work has shifted to Linux 3.7, and...
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Mobile is trending high these days, though economic conditions are still the determining factor for any market. To wit, International Data Corporation (IDC) projects that the mobile phone market will grow just 1.4 percent year-over-year in 2012, the lowest annual growth rate in three years despite what it expects will be a record number of...
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Japanese TV maker Sharp is in desperate need of a cash infusion, and it may be getting one from Qualcomm, which is reportedly going to invest as much as $120 million into the company. That would make Qualcomm Sharp's largest share holder, and could save the company from collapse. According to Reuters, Qualcomm will...
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In need of a feel-good story heading into the heart of the holiday season? Well friends, you have one, and it comes courtesy of LEGO, or "The best company in the world" as seen through the eyes of one extremely grateful 11-year-old boy who received a discontinued train set from LEGO after he tried acquiring it on his...
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