Fresh rumors about Samsung's Galaxy S4 hint at new screen technology and floating touch input for the flagship Android phone.

According to SamMobile, an inside source is saying that the Galaxy S4 will use green PHOLED technology for its display.

PHOLED uses phosphorescence instead of fluorescent light like traditional OLED displays, making it significantly more energy efficient.

The technology has so far been implemented in displays that use PHOLED for one or two of the red, green or blue light spectrums.

The green PHOLED would cover the green-yellow spectrum, lowering the display's power needs.

Look and don't touch

While the rumors suggest that the Galaxy S4's screen will be more energy efficient, there are also hints that users will be touching the screen a whole lot less.

The same inside source indicated that Samsung will use floating touch technology in the Galaxy S4, letting users hover their finger over the screen to for actions like previewing emails and thumbnails without tapping to open them.

Samsung used similar technology in the Galaxy Note 2, which used the S Pen to hover over the screen for the Air View feature.

Floating touch joins eye control through the Smart screen suite as a rumored new interface for the Galaxy S4.

Samsung is expected to fully reveal the Galaxy S4 at the Unpacked event, scheduled for March 14, and TechRadar will be there to bring you all the details on Samsung's new flagship smartphone.

Google confirmed plans to lay off another 1,200 Motorola staff as it desperately seeks a return to profitability for its multi-billion dollar acquisition.

The cutbacks, which will affect staff in the United States, China and India, are in addition to the 4,000 job losses the Silicon Valley giant announced last summer.

Google paid $12.5bn (UK£8.3bn, AUD$12.1bn) for the hardware manufacturer in a deal rubber-stamped last May, partly to boost its Android operating system, but also to acquire Moto's vast locker of 17,000 patents.

In an internal email leaked to the Wall Street Journal, Motorola told staff: "Our costs are too high, we're operating in markets where we're not competitive and we're losing money."

Positive hopes

Google is currently working through the cycle of products Motorola already had in motion at the time of purchase and announced an operating loss of $152m for Q4 of 2012, back in January.

The company said it has "lots of positive hopes" for many of the new smartphones and tablets in the pipeline and assured that it "was not in the business of losing money" with Motorola.

That will be no consolation for the workers who won't be part of this transition. The number of job losses now surpasses 5,000, which is around a quarter of all employees on the books before the buyout.

"These cuts are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer," confirmed Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick.

"It's obviously very hard for the employees concerned, and we are committed to helping them through this difficult transition."

Google has confirmed plans to lay off another 1,200 Motorola staff as it desperately seeks a return to profitability for its multi-billion dollar mobile acquisition.

The cutbacks, which will affect staff in the United States, China and India, are in addition to the 4,000 job losses the Silicon Valley giant announced last summer.

Google paid $12.5bn (UK£8.3, AUD$12.1) for the hardware manufacturer in a deal rubber-stamped last May, partly to boost its Android operating system, but also to acquire Moto's vast locker of 17,000 patents.

In an internal email leaked to the Wall Street Journal, Motorola told staff: "Our costs are too high, we're operating in markets where we're not competitive and we're losing money."

Positive hopes

Google is currently working through the cycle of products Motorola already had in motion at the time of purchase and announced an operating loss of $152m for Q4 of 2012, back in January.

The company said it has "lots of positive hopes" for many of the new smartphones and tablets in the pipeline and assured that it "was not in the business of losing money" with Motorola.

That will be no consolation for the workers who won't be part of this transition. The number of job losses now surpasses 5,000, which is around a quarter of all employees on the books before the buyout.

"These cuts are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer," confirmed Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick.

"It's obviously very hard for the employees concerned, and we are committed to helping them through this difficult transition."

No browser was left standing at this year's Pwn2Own hacking contest. The latest versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Google's Chrome, and Mozilla's Firefox all succumbed to exploits on day one, with hackers targeting a variety of zero-day vulnerabilities on each browser and Windows to hijack the underlying computer. By the end of the event at least $420,000 of the $560,000 prize fund was claimed -- almost a clean sweep.

French security firm Vupen -- which has been criticized in the past for selling exploits to governemnts -- took down IE10 on a Surface Pro tablet running Windows 8 as well as Firefox on Windows 7. The first is said to have required the most effort as it involved two separate zero-days and a full sandbox bypass, netting them an impressive $100,000. Meanwhile, Firefox fell to a zero day exploit that bypassed the browser's Address Space Layout Randomisation and the Data Execution Prevention protection in Windows for another $60,000.

In contrast with last year due to a change in the contest's rules, Vupen disclosed all the details about how they were able to exploit the vulnerabilities to each software house so they could be fixed.

Day 1 also saw Chrome 25 yield to a couple of researchers from MWR Labs, who exploited a flaw in the browser to gain code execution in the context of the sandboxed renderer process, and a kernel vulnerability in Windows 7 to gain system priviles for executing code on the machine. That was another $100,000. Interestingly, Google had pushed out fixes for 10 vulnerabilities in Chrome just before the event launched.

There was actually one browser that left the contest unscathed but that's not necessarily a reflection of its security. No researchers picked Safari on OS X as their target. It should be noted that in previous years Apple's browser has been among the first to fall, and this year there was a sizeable $65,000 bounty for an exploit, so it's inclear if there was simply no interest or if no one came up with a working hack.

Day two of Pwn2Own saw George Hotz take down Adobe Reader for $70,000, Vupen exploiting Flash for another $70,000, and not one but three Java exploits from different firms amounting to $20,000 each.

Chrome OS survives Pwnium

At the same CanSec West security conference Google also hosted its third Pwnium hacking competition from March 6 - 8, but this year the focus was on Chrome OS instead of its browser. The company promised more than $3 million in rewards and individual prizes in two different levels: $110,000 for browser or system level compromise in guest mode or as a logged-in user, delivered via a web page, and $150,000 for a compromise with device persistence (guest to guest with interim reboot) delivered via a web page.

A Google spokesperson today confirmed the Pwnium 3 hacking contest completed without a winning entry, although  partial credit was may be due to those with incomplete or unreliable exploits.

Insiders have tipped the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the iPhone 5S as the bringers of wireless charging to the masses, with HTC also thought to be implementing wireless charging later this year.

The reports come from Digitimes' industry insiders who say that Samsung will adopt Qi wireless charging in the Galaxy S4 (it's not the first time that rumour has surfaced and we'll find out for sure next week).

Just as the January speculation proposed, it sounds as though wireless charging might be more of an added extra than a built-in S4 feature, with users having to buy replacement back covers and a charging pad before they do away with the wires.

Apple juice

Apple, meanwhile, is thought to be making its own in-house wireless charger that will only work with its own products.

That'll mess up plans for a global wireless charging standard (just as Apple did with the whole microUSB charger thing) - Samsung, Nokia, HTC, LG, Motorola and Sony are all members of the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) which is likely to adopt a standard, possibly the Qi approach.

Of course, Digitimes is not the world's most reliable of sources, and we have no way of verifying its industry insiders so we wouldn't go putting your life savings on the fact that the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5S will come sans wires.

But wireless charging has been waiting in the wings for some years, with the likes of Powermat and Nokia leading the good if slightly inconvenient fight - plus the likes of LG have more recently joined the race. Let's face it, it's about time it went mainstream.