Fully Charged: Bonkers Gramophone Bluetooth speaker, GTA: San Andreas on your phone, and Apple’s Lytro rival

Gramovox Bluetooth speaker brings the 1920s to your living room – and your ears

Forget boring Bluetooth speakers: the Gramovox is a vaguely insane music machine inspired by the classic gramophones of the 1920s.

Currently seeking US$100,000 (£62,000) in funding through Kickstarter, the makers of the device have based its design on the Magnovox R3 horn speaker. The s-shaped horn is made to the exact proportions of the R3’s horn (albeit at around three-quarters the size), and for the prototype version it was 3D printed; in the finished product, they’ll be made from steel and brass. The base of the speaker, meanwhile, is made from solid wood.

According to the makers, the speaker serves up a warm, “vintage” mid-range sound. We imagine that vintage jazz albums and the like will sound far closer to how they were originally heard than they do on today’s hi-fis.The speaker also features a built-in battery with 15 hours of life, which can be charged via micro USB. As well as Bluetooth, there’s a 3.5mm line input for other audio sources.

For those of us in the UK and Europe, a pledge of US$350 (£215) will secure your own speaker once the product hits its target. US residents can get one for US$250 (£155). [Source: Kickstarter]

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas coming to your phone next month

Already finished GTA 5 and looking for more free-roaming digital criminality to partake in this Christmas? You’re in luck, because Rockstar Games has just announced that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will be coming to Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices in December.

The PS2-era game, which is set in the 90s and features three cities in the California-aping state of San Andreas, will come with brand new touch controls and a reworked checkpoint system. It also offers full controller support for iOS hardware controllers.

It’s not the first time Rockstar has given smartphone-using fans a Christmas present. This time last year, the publisher released Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on iOS and Android. [Source: Rockstar]

Next iPhone camera due for Lytro-like refocussing?

Apple has just been awarded a patent that would enable users to refocus photos after they’ve been taken, much in the same way as the Lytro light field camera.

The technology wouldn’t be built into the phone, but come courtesy of an adapter filled with microlenses. Apple cites the Lytro camera in the patent (which also uses an array of microlenses to capture information about incoming light’s direction and angle), but says its system can offer improvements in image resolution and quality. It would also be able to operate in two distinct modes: low-resolution refocusable and high-resolution non-refocusable.

As with all patents, its existence does not mean it will become a reality – but it’s an interesting idea to ponder. [Source: AppleInsider]

HTC FootballFeed brings BlinkFeed-style stats to your Android phone

Are you a football nerd, never happier than when you’re poring over stats from some Rumbelow’s Cup game from the mid-80s? An Android user too? Then you’re in the market for HTC’s FootballFeed, a free app that brings a rolling live feed of fresh stats from UEFA Champion’s League and Europa League games.

It uses a similar interface to the BlinkFeed homescreen app found on HTC phones to show off these stats, and also offers news articles, standings, commentary, photo galleries and competitions. You can download it now from the Play Store.