Formerly known as HTC Vigor, the HTC Rezound has leaked in press shots along with specs sheetbefore. Today, we get to see it with its screen on, and sporting some additional gear. A website specialized in selling cases for smartphones has leaked a photo of the Rezound, and here is how it looks.

The HTC Rezound is the second smartphone after the Galaxy Nexus to feature a 1280x720 HD display but, unlike Galaxy Nexus 4.65-inch unit, the Rezound packs a 4.3-inch S-LCD. Unfortunately, its still unknown how much RAM or storage space to expect, but we do know that the processor will be a beefy 1.5GHz dual-core one.

 

 

 

 

Facebook new Messenger application has been chilling out on Android and iOS for a while, and now BlackBerry gets join the party. Android and iOS versions are also getting a bit of an update, so you can now see when someone else is typing, and you've got quicker access to your favourite friends. They also include wider language support, which is good news for our international friends.

Facebook Messenger was launched as a dedicated chat application entirely separate from the core social networking application. On iOS and Android, it pulled in SMS and e-mail too, so you could really handle all of your incoming messages from one spot. Location-sharing, picture-sending, and group chat made Facebook Messenger a full-bodied instant messaging client, and considering the ubiquity of the social network, it made other IM apps like BBM and GTalk seem almost extraneous.

 

 

 

Lytro is the world first light field camera. Light field is the amount of light travelling in every direction through every point in space. Light field contains a lot more information than traditional light captured by regular cameras, especially pertaining to the placement of objects emitting that light and their distance from the camera.

 

Traditional cameras capture light and color but light field cameras also captures vector direction of the rays of light. This extra bit of information, combined with the special light field sensor and the powerful software, lets the camera know the position of the objects in the frame, which is what lets it perform its magic trick, focus selectively on objects AFTER they are captured by the camera.

 

 

Normal cameras use a manual or focusing system to focus on one object in the frame or the entire frame, depending upon the size of the aperture. Once its focused and a image is captured it becomes permanent and there is no way to change the focus after that. Lytro, on the other hand, takes a picture with no focusing whatsoever, which also makes it quicker than traditional cameras. After that it uses all the information it captured and with the help of some techno wizardry from the software presents you with an image that can be refocused any number of times, at whichever point you want in the frame.

 

 

 

 

 

At the official unveiling of ICS this week, Google said that in theory the update will be coming to all phones running Android 2.3, bringing cheer to Android Fans everywhere.

That raised the prospect of other Android phone manufacturers, such as Samsung and Sony Ericsson, also potentially deciding not to update their smartphones.

Happily for Samsung Galaxy S2 owners, though, it now looks like they're almost certainly invited to the party after all.

Responding to S2 users enquires for a timeframe for the upgrade via its Twitter presence, Samsung UK said there currently is "no official date" for when it plans to make ICS available.

 

 

ASUS has just posted a new video teaser for what appears to be a next-generation Eee Pad Transformer. Titled "The next Transformation," the clip is pretty light on details, though the mysterious device does make a brief appearance toward the end, sporting a design similar to what we saw last week, with ASUS Zenbook lineup.

 

No word yet on whether the forthcoming Transformer will be powered by NVIDIA quad-core Kal El, as rumored, but you can see the teaser for yourself after the break.

 

 

 

The statement talks about HTC reviewing Ice Cream Sandwich features and functionality to determine their upgrade path. Despite the improvements in Ice Cream Sandwich, however, HTC is determined to not let go of their Sense UI and will be working to combine both of them, taking into account the hardware of the device. From what we can tell, you can expect a Sensed-up version of Ice Cream Sandwich on their recently released phones such as the Sensation and EVO 4G but we would not bet too heavily on slightly older phones like the Incredible S and Desire S getting the update.

HTC Full Statement is:

"We are excited about the latest update for Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, and are currently reviewing its features and functionality to determine our upgrade plans. Our goal for Android updates is to give every customer an improved user experience, which means balancing each phone's unique hardware, HTC Sense experience and the Android kernel. While our goal is to upgrade as many of our recent devices as possible, we are committed to maintaining every phone performance and usability first. Please stay tuned for more updates on specific device upgrade plans."

 

 

 

 

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is in our office for a short while and while our first look article is in the works, we decided to dive in and see the revamped camera app and explore the new features it offers.

The camera interface has been totally reworked taking more minimal approach to the user interface, while the 5MP camera at back does all the heavy working.

 

Video Below!

 

 

 

After couple of leaks now its time for Nokia Sabre first live photo to surface. Its just a week before it gets officially announced at the Nokia World event in London and it looks the part as far as we are concerned.

Unfortunately, this photo does not reveal much of Sabre hardware and according to our tipster, the Windows Phone 7 specific buttons are below the screen, but are not really visible because of the camera flash of the N9 which took the photo.

We already revealed some of this Mango-running Sabre specs and our tipster confirms them. The Nokia Sabre will indeed pack a 1.4GHz processor bundled with 1GB of RAM. At the front, the Sabre features a 3.5-inch LCD display, while at the back a 5MP camera will take care of taking photos and shooting video.

 

 

 

Its not the first time we are finding ourselves in update fever amidst Android OS announcements. One factor has always been constant the pure-blood Google phones will get there first. So now its only logical that after the Galaxy Nexus it will be the Nexus S turn to claim the brand new OS version.

Andy Rubin has said in an interview at the AsiaD conference that Ice Cream Sandwich will be released "a couple of weeks after" the Galaxy Nexus and no word on which phones will get the desired treatment first. Putting together two and two we can conclude that ICS will be available somewhere between late November and December.

 

 

 

The first official press shots for the Nokia 800 Windows Phone 7.5 Mango smartphone has leaked. The device has long been rumored with the codename "Sea Ray" and looks near identical to the Meego-powered Nokia N9, which was released in very limited markets. The device is expected to be unveiled at next week Nokia World conference and we will be there to bring you all the details.

The Nokia 800 appears to feature the same form factor and color selection as the Nokia N9, sporting a pillow-shaped chassis with a front side fully covered by a 3.7-inch display under Gorilla Glass sans any physical buttons. The chassis comes in black, blue, and pink. If other specs are similar to the N9 as well, then the Nokia 800 could also be touting a nice camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

 

 

 

 

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus has been priced, with one UK retailer claiming the smartphone will cost 429 Pound or 800 USD for the 16GB model. According to Clove, the first stock of the new Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone is expected in the UK in early November but No plans to Market the 32GB version yet.

That could present a storage issue, since the Galaxy Nexus does not have a memory card slot for expanding the internal storage, just like the Nexus S before it. There is no microSD support, meaning users are limited to the capacity built into the phone.

 

 

 

 

Samsung has admitted that the new Galaxy Nexus was designed specifically with bypassing Apple patents in mind, mobile president Shin Jong-kyun saying that the company "will avoid everything we can." Talking to Yohhap News, Shin said Samsung "take patents very seriously" but due to the complexity of intellectual property there was no guarantee that the Galaxy Nexus would be immune from ligitation.

"We will see if it will be 100 percent free" he conceded, describing the ongoing legal saga between Samsung and Apple as just the start of a lengthy and unrewarding process. "I don’t think there is much gain” Shin admitted, "what we are losing is the pride in our brand." That has not stopped Samsung from attempting to fight back, filing motions for preliminary injunctions against the new iPhone 4S inAustralia and Japan, France and Italy.

 

 

 

 

Finally, the news the whole Android community has been waiting for has arrived! Samsung and Google announced in their Unpacked event in Hong Kong the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

 

Full Galaxy Nexus Specifications

 

 

Its been a heavy rumor period for the device, as the Galaxy Nexus leaked on a few occasions and most of what Samsung just announced is not a particular surprise The device is the first one of many more to come to run the newest version of the Android OS Ice Cream Sandwich.

 

It is also the every first smartphone with an HD super AMOLED display, measuring at 4.65 inches boasting the resolution of 720x1280. The display is slightly curved, just like the Nexus S is, and now features a super quick response time of just 0.01ms.

Under the hood the Galaxy Nexus is powered by the TI OMAP 4460 platform, boasting a 1.2GHz dual-core Cortex A9-based processor and 1GB of RAM. At the back the device packs a 5MP camera capable of shooting 1080p video, while at the front, there is the usual 1.3MP camera for video chatting. With Ice Cream Sandwich, this snapper can take and automatically stitch shots to make a panorama, shoot a time-lapse video and zoom while recording.

 

 

 

Nokia World will take place in London, October 26, where is Nokia will most definitely unveil their Windows Phone 7 devices.

To start the hype ball rolling, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, while giving a talk at a Web 2.0 Summit, went on sharing his anticipation about the forthcoming Nokia Windows Phone 7 phones. He went on saying that Nokia "will have a chance at their Nokia World show next week to show a bunch of new devices running Windows Phone", adding later on, "It should be pretty good".

As the tweets above suggest, the first 480x320 chassis should make an appearance around the time Windows Phone 7 "Tango" update arrives, and the second one, which is what we are excited about, will sport an HD resolution of 1280x720 coming with the "Apollo" update.

 

 

 

Looks like Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo just could not wait any longer and announced Google next Nexus phone, the Galaxy Nexus, hours before its official unveil at the joint Google and Samsung event in Hong Kong. Luckily for us geeks, the carrier has let some of the promo materials for the Galaxy Nexus slip between its fingers and now we can finally see official full-size shot of the device.

With the juicy brochure come in a new batch of detailed specs. We already knew about its massive 4.65-inch 720x1280 HD super AMOLED display and that it will run the newest version of Android 4.0, but now the processor is revealed as well. Unfortunately, its not the Exynos powerhouse with a 1.5GHz dual-core processor we were lead to believe, but rather its a 1.2GHz dual-core Cortex A9 processor on a TI OMAP 4460 chipset.

The Galaxy Nexus measurements are out as well and by the looks of it, its an impressively thin device. It measures at 136mm x 68mm x 8.8mm at its thinnest point and 11.5mm at its thickest. Sadly, there's no information on it's weight, but the battery will most likely be a 1,750mAh one.

As for the camera, unfortunately its listed as 5MP one, capable of shooting 1080p full HD video, but we still remain hopeful that the European market will see a Galaxy Nexus with an 8MP sensor on the back as some insider sources suggest. Memory and storage remain the same as earlier expected, 1GB and 32GB respectively. LTE is definitely a go with the next Google phone and in the areas where its not available, the Nexus will fallback to HSPA mode.

 

 

 

 

This video is not suitable if your heart misses a beat every time you see a tech device getting abused.

They get a hot Apple iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S II and drop them three times from different heights onto concrete. While here at GSMArena we may test everything there is to test on a mobile device, we cannot test how physically strong and durable these devices actually are. So, if you are interested how the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy S II fare on this test.

 

Watch Video Below!

 

 

An insider source has apparently disclosed to The Korea Times that Apple is indeed counting on Samsung to produce its quad-core custom A6 processor that should be showcased in the next iPhone and iPad incarnations whether 5 and 3 or something involving the letter S and so forth.

A supposed exec from an Apple parts supplier has said that Apple is in talks with Samsung over the shipments of its A6 processor and that Apple still views Samsung as a critical business partner.

It seems the raging patents war between the two tech giants is regarded as an entirely separate relationship and that there are no hard feelings in the other lines of business. Samsung Electronics Chief Executive Choi Gee-sung has addressed to reporters that Samsung is regarding their legal battles with Apple well away from the business relationship the two companies share.

 

Like the current legal battle with Apple is not enough for Samsung, they are looking for even more trouble. Apparently, a page on the Korean company website dedicated to the Galaxy Player 50 features maps that are clearly ripped from the iPhone Maps app, as you can see from the image above. I am saying "apparently" because I was not able to access that page for some reason the site returns me back to language/country selection process.

Now why would Samsung want to do something like this? The way I see it this must be an error on behalf of designers employed by the company to create pages for the 5-inch media player. I doubt it intentional its just that someone does not know there are big visual differences between Google Maps for iOS and Android.

 

 

 

Mozilla has recently decided that in order to improve Firefox for Android they need to dump XUL-otherwise known as eXtensible User interface Language, the language thats currently used to develop a consistent Firefox look and feel across multiple platforms-and start using Google native Android interface widgets. This does not mean that Mozilla is going to stop using their Gecko rendering engine that makes

 

Firefox what it is, it just means that they will ditch their attempts at creating a consistent user interface in order to deliver users a better experience. Johnathan Nightingale, Director of Firefox Engineering, announced the decision on the mozilla.dev.platforms.mobile usenet group, saying the three major areas that should see drastic improvement are:

• 01: Startup - A native UI can be presented much faster than a XUL based UI, since it can happen in parallel with Gecko startup. This means startup times in fractions of a second, versus several seconds for a XUL UI on some phones.

• 02: Memory use - We believe a native UI will use significantly less memory.

• 03: Responsiveness - A native UI has the potential for beautiful panning and zooming performance.

 

 

 

Opera 12 Alpha, also codenamed as Opera Next, has stepped out of the shadows and is now available for you to download. The Opera Software team has been working hard integrating a new HTML5 rendering engine, tweaking the navigation bar and most notably enabling full hardware acceleration for web page rendering.

Whats great about this hardware acceleration feature is that all the elements of a webpage get rendered by your graphics card, which increases the speed of displaying the page on your monitor.

 

 

 

Although Opera unique Vega graphics engine is already lightning fast, Opera is now using your computer graphics card for extra processing power. This supercharged boost is called hardware acceleration and makes intensive web applications and games run even better.

To utilize hardware acceleration, Opera 12 alpha currently requires a graphics card, as well as OpenGL. Further support, including DirectX, will come later on Beta.

 

 

 

 

We all have heard of Instagram, the iOS great image sharing service. You take a picture, apply a filter, add a frame and a comment, and it will instantly post it to Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. Pixlr-o-matic tries to give Android users an Instagram equivalent. It lacks the social capabilities of Instagram and Flickr, but the sheer number of filters and effects to add to your photos are mind-boggling.

 

Download 

DOWNLOAD Pixlr-o-matic Here it is available on the Android Market as a FREE, ad-free app for devices that have Android 2.1 or above and Support all screen resolutions (GalaxyS, Galaxy SII, Sensation...etc) but It Require Adobe Air 3 to be Installed.

User Interface

The user interface is great. Its very neatly organized and it is really easy to use. When you launch the application you are given three options: select a photo from your gallery, take a fresh photo from your camera, or select one of their photos.

 

Once you have decided on what photo to use, you can start having fun, applying filters, lens effects and borders.

 

Filters

In the filters department the application is great. There are a huge amount of choices. The only downside is that they are referred to by people names (Sophia, Peter or Melissa) rather than their traditional names (sepia, black & white or cross-process). Other than this little inconvenience, everything works perfectly smooth. The preview updates almost instantly.

 

Lens Effects

Pixlr-o-matic also has a great amount of lens effects. This time the name actually describes (or tries to describe) the effect for example, Kryptonite adds a subtle green glow to the bottom of the photo.

 

Border Effects

You might have noticed a pattern emerging right now; there are many filters and many lens effects, so you might not be surprised to find out that there are also many borders. From a traditional black or white border to a modern floral border, you have a great variety to choose from.

 

 

I would like to note that there are 25 filters, 30 lens effects and 31 border styles. I concluded that the number of possible combinations of effects is around 25,000 !

The End Result

When you are done with choosing a filter, lens effect and border, you are taken to the final screen where you can choose where to export your picture. This is where the app stops seeming so great, but more on that later. For now let’s just say you can save your picture on your SD Card storage.

 

Social Skills

As I implied earlier, the app export features are poor. You will find that you cannot connect to Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other major social sites (Tumblr, WordPress, Flickr). Thats a huge bummer. I would have wanted to see at least Facebook or Twitter, but it does not have any social sharing whatsoever. It does allow the use of an image hosting site, but even that does not have the social capabilities that are practically expected these days.

 

There is, however, a loop-hole. When you are prompted to choose where to export, You are given three options:

• imm.io: this the their proprietary site. You can post it here, copy the link and then share it via your favorite social application. The downside is that the photo is deleted if it’s not viewed by anyone for 30 days.
• Save to SD card: this saves the picture to your SD card. Pretty self-explanatory.
• Export: here is where things get interesting. You can choose your favorite social client (TweetDeck, for example) and then upload the picture to yfrog, twitpic or any other image hosting sites through this app. This makes the need for social integration almost redundant.

 

So where I (at first) thought the application is not that good, it throws a curve ball. Why do you need social integration, when you can pop the image in your favorite social client? Problem solved.

Examples

Below you will find various photos showing different filters, lens and border effects.

 

Cross-Platform

I mentioned in the Availability section that this ap is also available as a web app, desktop app, and a Facebook app in other words, its cross-platform. You will be surprised to find out that the user experience is the same on every platform, as cross-platform developers tend to adapt their application to the platform, rather than adapting the platform to the application.

This is another great big plus for the app. Now I can add a personal touch to all my photos from my computer, my Facebook Albums, or my phone.

 

 

Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has prematurely confirmed Google and Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first Android Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone, set to be officially revealed in a few hours time in Hong Kong. According to the carrier tweet, NTT DoCoMo will be among the first to launch the Galaxy Nexus, expected to take place at some point in November.

Unfortunately there is no specification detail included, which means we only have the previously leaked and rumored data to go on. Thats suggested a 4.65-inch 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED HD display, curved chassis and 1.5GHz dual-core processor, along with NFC, high-speed cellular connectivity and an 8-megapixel camera with Full HD video recording.

NTT DoCoMo does have an LTE network, so its possible the Nexus Prime could pack 4G too. There have been rumors of a Verizon exclusivity deal in the US, though so far unconfirmed, but that might imply that the Nexus Prime would be a World Phone, like the iPhone 4S, combining CDMA and GSM/UMTS support.

 

This image wa on Motorola teaser site and gives us a good look at the new DROID RAZR. Well thats one name full of history. It must be said that it is indeed an attractive looking design, particularly the back with that sweet looking Carbon fiber adorning it.

You can also see the 4G LTE logo on the back, along with certain other details such as the FCC ID, which suggests that the battery is sealed. The back swiftly rises to a bulge near the top, where you can find the camera lens that claims to do 1080p video along with an LED flash and a loudspeaker.

Video Below!

 

 

An Apple supplier has warned that unexpected factory downtime could well impact MacBook Airproduction, as well as possibly supplies of certain HTC smartphones. The manufacturer was forced to temporarily close a production facility after nearby residents made complaints of a strange odor seemingly coming from the plant. "Shipments to our customers will inevitably be affected company president" Allen Horng confirmed in a press conference.

"We already asked to make adjustments to their procurement" Horng continued, though whether Apple and others will be able to find alternative supplies at short notice is unclear. Apple MacBook Air ultraportable uses a specially milled unibody aluminum chassis that allows the company to significantly reduce bulk and weight; a similar milling process has also been featured in some high-end smartphones from HTC.

Both companies may struggle to keep to their own production timelines now, however. Catcher says there is no known date when the production line will resume work, as it depends on the plant passing a local government inspection.

 

 

With Nokia World fast approaching more and more upcoming Windows Phone 7.5 Mango devices getting their noses out of the closet. First it was the Nokia Sun, which was leaked from an Orange France roadmap and now its the Nokia 710, found in Nokia own Developers site.

Luckily, they managed to take a screenshot of some of the specs list before Nokia fix their error and remove the device from the site. Interestingly, the device is listed to run "Maemo Internet Tablet OS 2008 edition", but the facts tend to make this Nokia 710 more of a Windows Phone Mango material.

Specifications include :

• 1.4GHz Cortex A8
• 3.7″, 800×480 Clear Black TFT
• 28mm wide angle 5MP 
• 720p, 30FPS
• 8GB Internal memory
• 512mb RAM
• Browser BL-5B 3.7V 820mAh (820mAh) 400 hours standby (more than iPhone 4S), 5H 3G browsing, 7H GSM talk time. MicroSIM.

RIM has announced its compensation package for BlackBerry users affected by last week outage, and if you were hoping for a refund then you are going to be disappointed. Instead, RIM is offering a bundle of twelve apps usually collectively priced at over $100 from the BlackBerry App World free, including titles such as SIMS 3 and Vlingo Plus, while enterprise customers will also get a month free Technical Support.

If enterprise users already have a Technical Support contract, they will find an extra month service tacked onto the end of it. Those without will be offered a standalone free month of the enhanced services, with no obligation to continue.

Everyone else will have to wait for RIM to begin to roll out the free apps, which the company says will happen "over the coming weeks" and run until the end of the year. "We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience" RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in a statement. "We have apologized to our customers and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence. We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again."

Whether that will satisfy angry users or indeed prevent them from jumping ship to Android or iOS remains to be seen.

 

Free Apps:

 

• SIMS 3 – Electronic Arts
• Bejeweled – Electronic Arts
• N.O.V.A. – Gameloft
• Texas Hold’em Poker 2 – Gameloft
• Bubble Bash 2 – Gameloft
• Photo Editor Ultimate – Ice Cold Apps
• DriveSafe.ly Pro – iSpeech.org
• iSpeech Translator Pro – iSpeech.org
• Drive Safe.ly Enterprise – iSpeech.org
• Nobex Radio™ Premium – Nobex
• Shazam Encore – Shazam
• Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – Vlingo

 

 

 

What better way to promote a new mobile wallet service than by sending a swarm of marketing people to stores and then having said marketeers offer to pay for strangers purchases? Thats exactly what Google recently did in New York and San Francisco, and guess what? It works. People flipped out, and rightly so, because they have never seen stuff like near field communication (NFC) based payment services in the wild.

There have been credit cards with little chips in them that do wireless payment, but Google explicitly says in the video that putting your credit cards on your phone is akin to man most amazing accomplishment.

Video Below!

 

 

Verizon Wireless is set to introduce two Android smartphones next month that are pretty much guaranteed to make geeks from sea to shining sea jizz in their pants. First up,the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which we have been hearing rumors about for quite a few months now. Its going to be the first smartphone to run Google next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), which we will know plenty more about in less than 50 hours thanks to an official Google event that will be live streamed from Hong Kong. Besides running ICS, the Galaxy Nexus is also set to sport a massive 4.6 inch screen that pushes 1280 x 720 pixels. That puts it in AppleiPhone 4/4S territory in terms of pixels per inch. Underneath all that glass will be a dual core processor 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a camera that will we are hearing conflicting reports about its either 5 megapixels or 8 megapixels.

Next up is the HTC Rezound, which many folks recognize as the Vigor. Its a Gingerbread smartphone, making it incredibly unattractive due to ICS being right around the corner, and like the Galaxy Nexus it will have a screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. To be incredibly blunt, we could care less about the Rezound since HTC's Sense UI makes us want to go to a fancy restaurant, smash some wine glasses to rouse everyone attention, and then shove those sharp crystal stems right into our eyes. The Galaxy Nexus on the other hand will deliver the pure Android experience, which will make it the best Android smartphone until... well, until the next Nexus hits the scene.

Both will be announced on November 10th, both will be sold for an astonishing $300 with a 2 year contract!

 

 

Its been only three days since the iPhone 4S started selling and it has already managed to allure more than 4 million people into buying it. Put in retrospect, in its first days of availability, the iPhone 4S outsells its predecessor more than two times. Whoa, those are some serious numbers.

Samsung, on the other hand, do not share the crazy success of Apple latest version of the iPhone, but they have also scored a landmark of their own. The Galaxy S family has surpassed a total of 30 million sales globally. The Galaxy S II has generated more than 10 million sales since its initial launch in April, while the original Galaxy S has sold in a total of 20 million unit sales since its release in 2010.

 

 

When Apple announced the iPhone 4S, one of the features they mentioned in the keynote was the new antenna system. The antenna system on the iPhone 4 caused a lot of controversy last year due to its failure to hold on to the network when the gap on the side was bridged by your hand, a very likely scenario. Apple solution to this was to provide free Bumper cases, a change in the network signal bar algorithm and a suggestion to hold the phone differently.

With the iPhone 4S, Apple changed the antenna system. It now has two antennas and it can automatically switch between them, even during a call, to ensure the phone remains connected regardless of how you hold it.

 

Video Below!

 

 

 

After HP thought it had enough of Palm and decided to stop producing the phones and the TouchPad, it was only a matter of time before the retail stores that were selling these devices exclusively would be shuttered.

Before the shops were closes, however, HP did offer some tantalizing discounts on the remaining products to clear the stocks. On the last day, the HP Veer was being sold for $50, the Pixi for $25 and the TouchStone was being sold for $2.50.

 

 

According to Rodman and Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar, the next version of the iPhone is the last project the late Steve Jobs was "intimately involved with from concept to final design" and thats why the iPhone 5 will become a truly "cult classic".

Continuing his analysis, Kumar goes on to saying that the iPhone 5 will be the same size of the current iPhone 4(S), but with a slimmer profile and a larger screen. However, thats not all that surprising bearing in mind all the endless rumors and mockups we saw the past couple of month.

It seems logical that Apple former CEO would give more attention to a more substantial project, like the iPhone 5, instead of the iPhone 4S, being the minor upgrade it represents.

 

 

The following concept design comes from a workshop held yearly by Sony, the product being here a hand-held device that records sounds, attaches them to symbols, and stamps them on objects for later scanning. When you scan a symbol later on, the device plays back the sound you recorded at an earlier date. 

This device is conceptualized by Shan Hao Cheng, and is made with the Sony brand on it simply because of the event that Sony holds yearly in China. I must remind you, as I must remind everyone who happens upon an early concept design post such as this, that the product is not yet brought up to speed with the technology needed to execute it. Because designers in this particular Sony event are allowed to design without exact execution in mind, the imagination can run wild, and the designs can essentially be magic.

 

 

 

If you own an Android-powered smartphone, chances are you are using ASTRO to manage your files. The popular file manager app provides all the basic features you would expect from such application plus much more via third-party plugins. As a matter of fact, its one of those must-have applications pretty much every Android user should have installed on his/her device.

And now it has been updated with support for Honeycomb tablets. Needless to say, all that extra space is used to cram more information on the screen, presenting users with a split-screen menu view. In addition, there are in-app drag and drop capabilities, one-touch pop-up menu options, and advanced settings for customizing user experience.

 

The picture above does not show us much we do not already know but there are a few things that may interest a few people. One thing that we are surprised to see is that the handset will not be a world phone. This really will not mean much unless you travel a lot but even if you do not its a nice option to have. We have also got the confirmation that the Galaxy Nexus will rocking 4G LTE, which is something we have heard ever since we first got word of the handset.

 

 

Google is cleaning out plenty of old experimental projects and social features, including the failed social attempt that was Google Buzz. In a blog post today, Google VP of Product essentially explained that success requires focus and thought on what you work on as well as what you do not work on and therefore their decision to discontinue several products.

Back in July, Google had announced that it was shutting down Google Labs and integrating some of its projects into more successful products while axing others. Today seems to be the finalization of that clean out with Google Labs completely shutting down later today. Horowitz also confirmed that Code Search, Jaiku, iGoogle social features, and the University Research Program for Google Search will all shutdown on January 15, 2012.

 

 

 

 

Marvel Comics has launched its official application for the Android users. At the moment, its made for smartphones and tablets running Android 2.x, but we are sure the Honeycomb update is in the making as we speak.

As you can imagine, the application allows you to browse comics and buy them while on the go. Its still not a worldwide thing, though I guess that will be changed too in the near future.

 

 

An unofficial port of the iPhone 4S Siri voice recognition system to the iPhone 4 has been revealed, though its unclear whether Apple will ever enable the speech control tech for the older handset. Currently the port the handiwork of developer Steve Troughton-Smith and 9 to 5 Mac is capable of loading the Siri interface and controls, since Apple server-side processes are integral to Siri interaction with the iPhone hardware, right now any spoken commands will not be followed.

There are also some significant speed issues, which are evident in the video demo below. Siri lacks the necessary iPhone 4 GPU driver since that was not present in the iPhone 4S binary cache, and so the whole interface is a whole lot more sluggish than what you would see on the iPhone 4S.

 

Video Demo Below!

 

 

 

 

The Foursquare app for BlackBerry got a modest upgrade today. No, its not going to include Radar, but the logo in the top-left now launches into a notification stream. The notification list will include comments on your check-ins, when friends do one of your tips, both you and a friend have an identical place on your to-do list, when you're ousted as mayor, and a bunch of other activity on the location-based social network.

Foursquare is basically a location-sharing social network with a lot of game elements piled on. You get points every time you check in to a place, which vary depending on how long its been since you have checked in last, who you are checking in with, and lots of other variables. Those points put you on a leaderboard among your other friends, so you can compete to be the top dog.

 

 

 

Microsoft 8.5 billion USD acquisition of Skype has finally been closed, the company recently announced. The plan is for Skype to become a new business unit within Microsoft, with Skype CEO Tony Bates becoming the president of the newly created Skype division. Users should expect for Microsoft to integrate Skype into a variety of its products, including mobile.

 

The Official Skype blog Posted :

"Joining forces with Microsoft is the best way to accelerate this mission and capitalize on our position at the intersection of social, mobile and video communications. Simply put, we want to transform communications. Microsoft is committed to the ubiquity of the Skype experience communication across every device and every platform will remain a primary focus. And we have only scratched the surface."

 

 

Larry Page, who not so long ago took over as Google CEO, handed in the company Q3 financial results with a big smile on his face. Revenues were up 33-percent Year-on-Year (YoY) to 9.72 billion USD.

The number of paid clicks on Google ads increased 28% YoY and 13% compared to the previous quarter of this year. They were 5% more expensive too, both YoY and consecutively.

Larry Page also posted on Google+ that there are now 190 million activated Android devices around the world. Last Year, that number was 135 million. The Google revenue from mobile devices also grew 2.5 times over the last year.

 

 

The iPhone Voice Control feature is present for quite some time in the iOS. If you have ever used a passcode on your lockscreen for protection, you should be already familiar you should disable the Voice Dial from the settings otherwise everyone can call anyone he likes.

Well, enter the much more capable iPhone 4S Siri. Guess what, it would still work from your lockscreen by default even if you have set a passcode for your iPhone 4S. You can already imagine how someone who gets access to your locked phone can perform all these clever tasks you have seen on the demos like extract all sorts of info about you, your regime and they can even call whoever they like. On the iPhone 4 you are in much the same danger with Voice control though its far less capable and versatile than Siri.

To protect yourself from these sorts of perils, its best that you dig in your Passcode options. From there, you will be able to turn off the Voice Dial or Siri functionality on the lockscreen.

 

 

 

THe iPhone4s White Eddition comes pre-loaded with iOS 5, which means you get Apple new Notification Center, a BBM-esque service called iMessage, the ability to edit your photos. And Also do not forget Siri your Humbled personal Assistance

 

Here the New Box of the iPhone4s with Golden text on it:

And we are off. This box looks just like the iPhone 4 box with an extra 'S' on it.

The iPhone4s is Really White Beautiful frame-border, and its Available from Day one !!

Your standard wall charger, USB cable, and Apple earphones.

 

The iPhone 4S slightly redesigned antenna, front-facing camera, and Retina display screen.

The Home button, 30-pin dock connector, speaker, and microphone that should be familiar to all of you. Especially if you have the iPhone 4.

 

 

Black Version Unboxing Video Below!

 

 

 

US Cellular informed that its Added a New Smartphone to its portfolio, the HTC Hero S. The device is available for new customers for 199.99USD after a $100 mail-in-rebate, as well as for those on Belief plans who are eligible for a phone upgrade.

The old Hero S is US Cellular version of the HTC Kingdom, which will also be available from Sprint as EVO Design 4G. Specs wise, it comes with a 4-inch Super LCD qHD touchscreen, single-core processor, 5-megapixel camera with auto-focus on the back, 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, EV-DO Rev. A and Wi-Fi connectivity, GPS, Bluetooth and a memory card slot.

 

 

The rumors of the next version are already heating up and the rumors on the next iPad are going strong too. An analyst from Susquehanna named Jeff Fidacaro is claiming that sources in the supply chain are saying the iPad 3 is headed into production.

 

 

According to Fidacaro, supply chain checks suggest that production numbers for the iPad are ramping up for Q4. This is to be expected since Apple is gearing up for a heavy holiday sales season as always. The production numbers are claimed to be climbing to 12 to 14 million units from about 11 to 13 million. That increase in production is also claimed to be partly due to an early run of the iPad 3.

 

 

The iPhone 4S Siri personal assistant system is one of the new smartphone headline features, but buyers outside of the US have been discovering not all the functionality is present. Currently as we mentioned in our iPhone 4S review Siri cannot access Maps or Yelp business functionality outside of the US, but according to Apple FAQ those services will be added "in additional countries" in 2012.

The exact list of countries where international support will be enabled is not known, though right now Siri which Apple describes as being in beta is only available for US English, UK English, Australian English, French and German anyway. 2012 will bring support for additional languages, Apple also confirms, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian and Spanish.

Without the local functionality, many of Siri headline-grabbing features do not currently work outside of the US. Asking your iPhone 4S to find nearby restaurants is not supported, and neither can the smartphone bring up business addresses and phone numbers.

 

 

There are rumors circulating around the tech world today that Google may be getting ready to launch its own MP3 store. We already have some giant MP3 stores to choose from with iTunes being the top for people that are on the iPhone platform. When it comes to getting music onto your Android smartphone many people use Amazon’s music store. There are also a wealth of other music stores on the market to choose from.

Amazon may not be the place of choice for many Android fans for long with the new rumor floating that Google wants to launch its own MP3 store. I think many Android fans especially would flock to a Google offering since Google also makes the OS. Google already has the cloud service, Google Music, where you can upload your tracks to stream to any device.

 

 

 

 

All eyes may be on the iPhone 4S queues this morning, but Apple recent iOS 5 update is also prompting some feedback, and not all of it positive. iPad owners upgrading to the latest version have discovered that their first-gen tablets in fact will not get multitasking gestures, something it seems Apple has quietly updated its iOS features page to clarify.

 

Unfortunately, the company is yet to amend the UK version along with other international versions of the page, at time of writing. According to those pages, first-gen iPad owners running iOS 5 should be able to "using four or five fingers, swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar, pinch to return to the Home screen and swipe left or right to switch between apps."

iOS 5 Users Bugs list:

• The photo quality is worse then iOS 4 and are less defined.
• Some problems relating to reminders.
• Problems with the rotation of the photos.
• Problems relating to the alarm selection as when selecting for 12 hours timing it displays in 24 hours.
• Some applications crash like pictures, iMessage, etc.
• Setting the date in some situations and applications doesn't seem to be correct.Some times displaying the wrong date.
• Problems with the activation of iMessage by FaceTime and phone number.
• When you search for an app, the search is not as immediate but first you must click the "Search" button.
• The images are viewed in a bad way, a video is displayed as a picture.
• When you click "Install" from the App Store, you do not have the correct view of the green button on the installation.
• Problems with the buttons on the Camera, not aligned correctly.
• Problems with syncing with iTunes via WiFi (always inactive button).
• Problems with Spotlight on the iPhone (do not display all items).
• Problems with Spotlight on iPad (gray screen).
• When searching for Wi-Fi it shows some are available when they are not.
• There are no background in Native IOS 5.
• Problems with backups through icloud.
• Music Coverflow very slow and Crashed a lot on iPod touch and iPhone
• Music Album Arts on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch are missed up and duplicated
• iTunes sync does not Transfer all the Apps which results some Missing Apps on the iPhone

We found a Video Posted about the "CoverFlow" Bug on Youtube too, Users also reporting that their songs got wrong album arts from other songs and some of them are duplicated.

Video Below!

soruce

 

iOS 5 has been just Released by Apple and Got alot New Features, like the Notification center (just like the one on Android), To get set up, watch the video below and follow these steps:

1. Open up the Settings app on your iPhone home screen.
2. Tap the tab labeled Notifications.
3. First tap the Weather or Stocks widget. These each have one option only: on or off. On will display the widget in the notifications panel and off will not.
4. Go back to the Notifications settings page and tap one of the listed apps. These are the settings you will see for the majority of apps. This is where you select what kind of notifications you want that app to provide. If you choose None it won't notify you at all. If you choose Banner it will show a little unobtrusive banner at the top of the screen and store the notification in the notifications panel. If you choose Alert, the app will use the old style of alerts and show a popup message every time the app wants to get your attention. Choose the one you want for this particular app.
5. Up at the top you will see an option to turn Notification Center on or off for this particular app. If you turn it on, alerts will show up in the notifications panel. If you choose no, they will not. Below that option you can set how many alerts you want to show up in notifications. The default is five, but you can choose anywhere between one and 10.
6. Towards the bottom you can decide if you want to show these alerts on the lock screen. This is really handy for message previews, but not particularly private.
7. Once you have finished a single app, you will need to go through all of your apps to set them up the same way. This can be tedious, but you'll find that iOS does a pretty good job of guessing what you will want and you should get through it all quickly.

click to view Original version

 

Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich is all set to be unveiled October,19 with the Samsung Nexus Prime and Google tradition of putting up a statue for each major update continues. Google Andy Rubin shared the video below showing the Ice Cream Sandwich statue going up.

 

 

We have seen some leaked videos and photos of Android Ice Cream Sandwich and it should have a cleaner UI and some new features. We have heard that this will be the unification of Android on the phones and the Honeycomb tablet version but lets hope there are a few surprises.

 

Video Below!

 

 

Good news for ATT HTC HD7S Users, the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango update is Now Available bringing a ton of improvements including Visual Voicemail, new speech commands, custom ringtones, contact groups, messaging threads, multi-tasking, better Live Tiles, Local Scout, video sharing and Other Great Features with Performance Improvements.

 

 

The folks at Sharp have decided to bring desserts and technology even closer together by creating an Android device which looks like a chocolate bar. In the most literal sense of the word that is.

The Sharp Q-Pod packs  a single-core Snapdragon MSM 8255 1GHz. There is 512 MB of RAM on board. The 3.7-inch LCD screen of the device has qHD (540 x 960 pixels) resolutio and 8MP camera with LED flash and an infrared port are on board too.

 

 

 

Sticking to their bi-yearly schedule of releasing new updates every April and October, Canonical has released the latest version of their Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu Called the Oneiric Ocelot this new version takes the release number to 11.10.

 

Among the list of addition is a new launcher placed on the side of the screen. It reminds one of the dock in Mac OS X. The launcher even shows tiny white indicators whenever an application is running, just like the dock on Mac. You can add or remove icons from the launcher by simply dragging them.

 

 

The Apple iPhone 4S is coming out tomorrow and if preorders are any indication, a lot of you really want this thing. Well, the gadget surgeons at iFixit has already gotten the device and ripped it apart for our enjoyment.

As we know, the Apple iPhone 4S has a dual-core A5 processor, 8-megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 in a design thats similar to the iPhone 4. The folks at iFixit said the design is similar to the Verizon iPhone in terms of the antenna but all of these versions will rock a microSIM slot for world-roaming capabilities. The battery has an extra .05 WHrs, so that is always welcome.

That world-roaming capability is due to the Qualcomm RTR8605 chip inside could be a boon for world travelers, as it will make roaming on foreign networks much easier. We are hearing mixed reports about which carriers will unlock the microSIM slot but honestly, its not that difficult to unlock it yourself or pay someone to do it.

 

 

 

 

It would appear that something special will be coming out of Verizon and Motorola goodie bag later this month as they hint at a big innovation to be unveiled at 12pm on October 18th.

As the invite suggests, the device in question will be faster, thinner, smarter and stronger than assumedly, whatever its predecessor was. The speculation and rumors floating around have led us to believe that we could see Motorola RAZR line revived with the Motorola Droid RAZR.

Supposed specs include a 4.3-inch 960 x 540 qHD Super AMOLED display, which would be an industry first. The Spyder is also expected to be a dual core LTE device running a 1.2GHz clocked processor of unknown origin, 1GB of RAM, an 8MP shooter offering 1080p HD video capture with image stablization and even an HD front-facer, again with an unspecified resolution.

 

 

 

 

Samsung announced several Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy S II fell into the "Super Smart" category, devices such as the Galaxy R, which is the Galaxy S II, but with a less capable camera and slightly inferior screen technology, fell into the "Royal and Refined" category. 

Inside it a single core 1.4GHz processor, 3.7 inch LCD screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, 5 megapixel camera, support for 14.4 Mbps HSPA, though we think T-Mobile will ask for a 21 Mbps HSPA+ version, and it runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

 

 

A couple of days ago, we told you about Qualcomm upcoming Snapdragon chipsets, designed with strong emphasis on power-efficiency. In order to fortify its commitment to the cause, Qualcomm has released a rather fascinating video for all of us, with bugs as its unusual cast.

The video clip is nothing short of hilarious. Bearing the title "The Bug Circus Generator", it shows a group of insects with various shapes and sizes, charge the battery of a Snapdragon packing smartphone (HTC Sensation) by performing circus tricks.

Video Below!

 

Continuing their legal assault on Samsung, Apple recently decided to take the Korean giant to court in Australia, asking them to block the sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country. A while later, Samsung approached Apple to settle the debate outside the court, which Apple refused.

Then yesterday, Samsung crashed Apple iPhone 4S launch part by giving away Galaxy S II smartphones for almost nothing for the first ten customers everyday till Friday right across the street from the Apple Store in Sydney, even nagging some of the people in line for the iPhone 4S.

Unfortunately,  The Australian court has granted Apple injunction against Samsung, blocking the sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country. This is the third time it has happened and if Apple decides to pursue Samsung in other countries things do not look too bright for Samsung.

 

 

 

 

Well, If you own an HP Touchpad HP or snatched one up for $99 either way, there is a good chance you want to lose the WebOS and move to Android Honeycomb 

The CyanogenMod team just released an alpha of v7.1 that you can install. But it is a really early version and the team themselves discourage you from installing it because you will encounter problems "ranging from the benign to the very serious".

Its also worth noting that putting Android on your TouchPad will void your warranty. Also, things like Wi-Fi, sound and camera might encounter problems among many other things.

 

Demo Below!

 

 

 

iOS 5 has been jailbroken as many times as there have been betas now that the real-deal is out, it time for another jailbreak. The iPhone Dev Team released a beta of redsn0w, a tethered jailbreak for Apple iOS 5 running gadgets.

Also, the iPad 2 is not supported and neither is the new iPhone 4S. If you have hack-unlocked your iGadget, you should stay away from this jailbreak too.

This is a tethered jailbreak, meaning you have to boot your iPhone/iPod/iPad by hooking it up to a computer and using redsn0w every time you restart or things will not work as expected.

 

 

 

Apple Has just Released the iOS 5.0 Update to all Aple users of iPad, iPad2, iPhone4, iPod touch 4g. Here is whats New on this Update and Whats still Missing copmaring to other avaialbe platforms on the Market.

 

• Notifications - real time on-screen notifications, lockscreen notifications and pull-down Notification Center
• iMessage service in the Messaging app enabling instant messages to other iOS users
• Reminders - including location-aware options
• Customizable notification sounds - email, voicemail and calendar alerts
• Twitter integration
• iCloud service integration – wireless backup and restore, app and content syncing
• Enhanced Camera app - viewfinder grid, supports a hardware shutter key
• Integrated photo editing - crop, auto enhance, rotate and red-eye fix
• Updated Safari browser - tabbed browsing (on iPad), private browsing mode, integrated Reader, Reading list and optimized performance
• Dictionary lookup throughout the interface
• Computer free operation - independent activation, OTA updates, iCloud backup and restore
• Wi-Fi synchronization with iTunes with automatic operation
• New features in the Mail app Bold, Italic, Underline and Quote options, extended Search, mass Mark as Read/Unread and Flag setting, Add/Delete mailbox folders
• Updated Calendar and Game Center apps
• Newsstand app combining all of your magazine subscriptions
• iPod player now called Music, has a new icon
• Separate Video player app for the iPhone
• AppStore purchase history
• New Storage management options
• Multi-tasking gestures for iPad
• AirPlay mirroring for iPad
• New accessibility options involving the LED flash, custom vibrations and Assistive Touch

 

 

Still missing:

• No Flash support in the web browser
• No quick toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G
• No Facebook integration
• No proper widgets for the lockscreen
• App folders still are limited to 12 apps tops
• No DivX/XviD video support out of the box
• No haptics for the touchscreen
• No Bluetooth file transfers to other phones
• Contacts lack a swipe-to-delete or mass delete feature

 

 

 

Nokia introduced a new member of its family of Symbian Belle-running smartphones. The Nokia 603 is a youthful looking, compact smartphone with a 3.5-inch ClearBlack LCD with IPS technology and a 1GHz CPU.

 

The Nokia 603 screen has nHD resolution (360 x 640 pixels) and 1000 nits brightness, so its probably the same unit that we saw on the Nokia 701. The smartphone offers quad-band 2G and tri-band 3G with 14 Mbps HSDPA and 5.7 Mbps HSUPA.

 

 

As for local connectivity, the Nokia 603 comes complete with GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, FM radio, a 3.5 mm audio jack and NFC. The smartphone has 2GB of on-board storage, which can be expanded to 32GB via the microSD card slot.

 

The Nokia 603 fixed-focus camera with an extended depth of field can capture 5 megapixel still and 720p video. Unfortunately, there is no front-facing camera so video-chatting with this one will be quite a challenge. Nokia 603 will cost you 200 Euro.

 

 

 

App Player alpha for Windows is a newly released piece of free software from developer BlueStacks. Designed to run on Windows PC and tablets, it allows you to run Android apps on your Windows computer or tablet, with no modification to the original app.

App Player lets you run apps windowed or full screen and with their Cloud Connect service, you can share software between your Android and Windows devices easily.

 

 

 

A press image of the yet unannounced LG Doubleplay for T-Mobile US just appeared online and gave us a clearer view of what the upcoming droid will look like. The peculiar QWERTY slider will pack a couple of screens a HVGA main one and a secondary display of unknown resolution on the QWERTY.

Other specs of the T-Mobile Doubleplay that we know include a 5 MP camera, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. That logo on the screen also shows that there is 4G connectivity, which in T-Mobile case could not be anything but HSPA+.

 

T-Mobile UK and Orange UK are continuing their push towards unification of their networks, the so-called big switch-on plan. Now, the two carriers form Everything Everywhere, the biggest communications company in the UK, and are about to start sharing their 3G networks very soon.

That means if you are a customer of either carrier, you can use the other 3G network to access the Internet at no extra charge or anything in effect, it would be no different than using your home network.

The upside is that it will improve coverage and data speeds. The "big 3G switch-on" starts rolling out next week by regions and should complete in a few months.
T-Mobile UK and Orange UK already share their 2G networks meaning calling and texting. A total of 1.7 million hours of calls have been made and 5 billion texts have been sent by people hooked up to the other network.

 

 

 

Apple has finally opened its iCloud service to the public. Till now it was only available to those who had a developer accounts but now anyone with an Apple ID can log in. Having said that the service is still not usable.

The reason for that is it requires iOS 5 on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and 10.7.2 update on the Mac before you can start using it and neither have been released yet. 

 

All you can do for now is go to the redesigned iCloud website and try to enter your Apple ID and password, only to be told to set up the service on an iOS device or a Mac running Lion.

 

 

The app Find My Friends that was announced a week ago at the Lets Talk iPhone event, has just become available into the Apple App Store. It is free and compatible with both the iPhone/iPod and the iPad given any of these run the latest iOS 5.

 

 

The app allows you to share your current location always with trusted friends or temporary with not-so-trusted ones. It works both ways you can see your friends location too.

 

Opera has just announced that it has released updated versions of its two Android-compatible mobile browsers. Opera Mini 6.5 and Opera Mobile 11.5 are already available for download in the Android market, allowing users to experience the latest goodies brought by the Norwegians.

 

The first change you will notice when you start the Opera Mini 6.5 or Opera Mobile 11.5 is the newly added screen, which shows you exactly how much data you have spent and saved using the two browsers.

 

 

Of course, Opera Mobile will no be saving anything if you are not using the cloud-assisted Turbo mode, but Opera obviously thought few people use it that way.

 

Download Opera 11.5 for Android

 

 

 

Samsung have undertaken less than subtle ways to continue its fight against Apple in Australia. They have set up a temporary shop in Sydney just outsides Apple own shop and are offering Samsung Galaxy S II droids for $2.

It is but there a catch. Even so, the line to the Samsung store is reportedly longer than the line to Apple store. A line of people to an Apple store is practically a tradition when there is a new gadget from Cupertino about to be launched, the iPhone 4S in this case.

 

 

 

Sony has been making TVs and other things for a very long time. The Sony Bravia line of HD and 3D TVs are some of the most popular around the world including in Sony home country of Japan. Sony has made an announcement today that is not good for the hoards of Japanese HDTV owners that purchased the Bravia brand. Sony has been asked by the Japanese trade ministry to recall 1.6 million Bravia TVs that are on the Japanese market.

The TVs covered in the recall were sold as far back as 2007. The reason for the recall is that a faulty component inside the sets poses a risk of fire. The sets in the recall are LCD units and the recall was forced after a September incident where an owner of an affected set had to call the fire department after a small fire happened in his TV.

Recalled Bravia models include: KDL-40D3400, KLD-40D3500, KDL-40D3550, KDL-40D3660, KDL-40V3000, KDL-40W3000, KDL-40X3000 and KDL-40X3500 models.

 

 

 

 

After Steve Job death, Samsung and Google decided to postpone their Unpacked' event, saying that 'it was not the right time to announce a new product'. 

But we are now hearing that the event has been rescheduled to October,19 and the venue has been shifted to Hong Kong and will coincide with the AsiaD: All Things Digital event that will also be held in Hong Kong.

 

 

 

One of the key selling points Apple have used to drive the newly announced iPhone 4S is its voice recognition software, Siri. The software itself goes beyond pre-designated voice commands and uses speech pattern recognition along with articificial intelligence applications to allow users to search the net, write messages, set alarms, check the weather and generally access the plethora of features available on their iPhone, all by voice.

The company in charge of Siri were until recently, independant of Apple, with their iOS app being one of the first major products out of the company. Following Apple's procurement Siri from SRI International in late April last year, any possibility of these advanced voice-recognition features coming to Android or Blackberry were scrapped, a shame considering there was serious talk of the service extending in those directions prior to the takeover.

Video Below!

 

 

Two Google Enginerrs has taken some photos of the Upcoming Google phone Samsung Galaxy Nexus or aka Nexus Prime.

The photo EXIF data states that the cameras used to take these images are in fact from the Galaxy Nexus or as we have been calling it, the Nexus Prime.

 

Unfortunatley, whether the cameras have been purposfully set to a lower resolution or uploading from the Google+ app has lowered the quality automatically, the images in question are fixed at 3 megapixels, making photo comparison somewhat impossible.

 

 

 

As you probably know, The N9 is already shipping to all some countries, Some Reports says that the FWVGA AMOLED Display of the MeeGo flagship is using a PenTile matrix, instead of a regular RGB one.

Its the same kind of matrix that we saw with Samsung first-gen Super AMOLEDs, where each pixel is composed of two subpixels rather than three. This gives less room for sub-pixel rendering and reduces the effective resolution, when displaying super fine detail.

 

 

To Make it clear with a pixel density of 251 ppi, the Nokia N9 still has an amazingly sharp display and its not that easy to spot the side-effects of the PenTile matrix. Still, if you look really closely, you will be able to spot the familiar dottiness.

 

 

 

 

The Apple iPhone 4S is yet to start shipping but someone already managed to get their hands on one. Some benchmark scores have been posted online.

The Browser benchmark being used here is BrowserMark, a popular benchmark that used to test and compare smartphones. The iPhone 4 had managed to get a score of 51,701 while running a GM beta version of iOS 5. The popular Galaxy S II, with its dual-core Exynos processor, managed to get a score of 55,144, which was the highest so far for any smartphone.

 

 

Now this is where the iPhone 4S comes in. The Safari browser running on iOS 5 and the dual-core A5 processor managed to obliterate the competition with a score of 89,567. No matter which side of the camp you may be, you cannot deny that it is an incredible score.

 

 

 

 

Social networking sites do not really get more recognizable than Facebook and for all the great things the iPad brings to the table, until now Facebook has amazingly not been one of them.

Excluding scaling up the iPhone app or accessing the site through Mobile Safari, Facebook has only really been available in app form via 3rd party solutions. Back in July this year it was then discovered that an official Facebook app for iPad did in fact exist and was locked away in an update of the then iPhone-centric FB app.

The app does offer a few new features. Users can play their favorite Facebook games in full-screen mode, thanks to the launch of the Facebook Platform for mobile devices and iOS. Games from EA, Zynga and more will support additional features such as Facebook Credits.

Today Nokia unveiled a couple of new entry-level additions to its portfolio of mobile phones. The Nokia X2-05 and Nokia C2-05 are S40-running handsets with QVGA screens that should fit easily in any budget.

The Nokia C2-05 slider offers a 2" 65K-color LCD, VGA camera and a microSD card slot. FM radio, Bluetooth and microUSB connectivity are also on board the lightweight (98.5g) featurephone. On the network side of things dual-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE is as good at it gets, but at least there are two versions of it for the different parts of the globe.

The Nokia X2-05 is a music-centered bar, packing a really powerful speaker. According to Nokia the perceived loudness of that one is 106 phons. An FM radio with a support for recording and a VGA camera are the other multimedia features of the phone.

Video Below!

 

 

 

Nokia announced back in May that they will be renaming their Ovi services such as the Ovi Store to Nokia Store. The process was supposed to happen later in 2012 and it finally has. The Ovi Store is now officially known as the Nokia Store.

But the name is not the only thing thats changed. There is a whole new app for it as well. The new app uses a redesigned interface and is built using Qt Quick. The app was originally designed for the Nokia N9 but has now been ported over to Symbian as well.

 

The New Nokia Store will be Heading to all Nokia Devices as an OTA Update

 

 

 

We can expect the Samsung Galaxy S III sometime in 2012. The image Below in question not only tells us when, but what we can expect from the yet to be announced Samsung flagship.

In a slide detailing the progression of the Galaxy S family, the Galaxy SIII sits in the top right.

Supposedly the Galaxy S III will bring to the table a Exynos 4212 1.8 GHz dual core processor, twinned with 2GBs of RAM. There is also a 4.6 inch Super AMOLED HD display that will provide HD resolution without the PenTile technology found in the current Samsung screens and to finish the list off, the upcoming S will supposedly have a whopping 12MP camera utilizing a W750 BSI CMOS sensor for image control.

Expected Specification for Galaxy SIII:

• 1.8Ghz Exynos Dual-Core
• 12.1MP Camera
• 2GB RAM
• 4.6 HD SuperAMOLED PLUS
• 1280x720p Display
• Android Icecream Sandwhich

 

 

 

The iPhone 4S features a new antenna design, intended to prevent any risk of Antennagate reoccuring, a plight that some iPhone 4 owners will remember all too well.

 

Not only that, the 4S new dual antennas can automatically switch when sending and receiving information, a trick Apple say is a first for a mobile phone, and one that others dissagree with.

 

Qualcomm has released the specifications of its upcoming Snapdragon S4 chipset, which will be the first in the mobile world to be using 28nm process technology. That would give it a substantial advantage in power-efficiency and processing power over its competitors.

 

The Snapdragon S4 chipset will be packing a couple of brand new Krait cores, which are based on Cortex-A9, rather than Cortex-A8, and should bring a 60% improvement over the currently used Scorpion processors at the same clock speed. However, Qualcomm has obviously found 60% to be an insufficient upgrade and it will be clocking those cores from 1.5GHz to the mind-blowing 2.5GHz.

 

 

Adreno 225 is the Snapdragon S4 GPU of choice and it should bring roughly 50% better performance than the Adreno 220. Now that probably will not make it the most powerful GPU on the market, but maybe Qualcomm figured it will be all that you will need anyway.

 

 

 

After a long wait, the CyanogenMod 7.1 has finally been released. Although originally planned to release last weekend but some issues with their automated build system prevented that from happening.

 

The latest version adds a host of improvements that can be found here and is now supported on 68 devices. Quite a few of these are from Sony Ericsson, something that was possible because the company reached out to CyanogenMod developers and provided them with devices, technical assistance and drivers. Samsung did something similar a while back.

New devices included on v7.1:

• HTC Desire S
• HTC Incredible S
• HTC Incredible 2
• LG Optimus 2X and T-Mobile G2x
• Motorola Backflip (Motus)
• Motorola Cliq / Cliq XT
• Motorola Defy
• Motorola Droid 2
• Motorola Droid X
• Samsung Captivate
• Samsung Fascinate
• Samsung Mesmerize
• Samsung Showcase
• Samsung Vibrant
• Samsung Galaxy S
• Samsung Galaxy S2 (multiple carriers)
• Sony Ericsson Xperia X8
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc
• ZTE V9

• 
  

 

 

 

Windows Phone just recently reached a major milestone with the 7.5 update, commonly known as Mango, by adding multitasking and other big improvements to the OS. Check out what we thought of it here. Anyway, now there are two other major milestones in the works too dual-core CPUs and LTE connectivity.

Andy Lees, head of the Windows Phone division. He thinks they are in a good position to take the role of the third player in the mobile OS world as an alternative to Android and iOS, with Mango helping to boost sales volumes.

As for dual-core CPUs, those are something thats being worked on but Lees did not give a time frame for when they might make it to market. Current top end WP phones run on 1.5GHz single-core CPUs and Lees thinks they will stack up well enough against dual-core smartphones.

 

 

 

You may have noticed that recently unveiled LG Optimus LTE comes with an 4.5-inch True HD IPS display with 1280 by 720 pixels (16:9 with 329 ppi) HD resolution. The Korean company thinks they have the best screen technology in the industry, the fact thats been confirmed by international product testing and certification agency Intertek. Apparently, True HD IPS displays perform better than AMOLED in areas of color accuracy, brightness, battery efficiency and performance. in case you wonder they included Samsung Super AMOLED Plus in the analysis as well and LG screen topped the chart.

 

Anyway, we like how it sounds and can only hope the Optimus LTE will be exported from the shores of the Korean peninsula sooner rather than later. Aside from packing such a powerful display, the Optimus LTE also comes with a dual-core 1.5Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, Wi-Fi connectivity, 8-megapixel camera on the back, front-facing camera, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS and so on.

 

 

With Nokia World only a few weeks away, the anticipation is palpable for the debut of the company first Windows Phone. Combined with earlier marketing material that we saw, these first print ads seem to solidify the fact that the device formerly known as Sea Ray will be marketed as the Nokia 800, although some evidence suggests that it may also be branded as Lumia in certain markets. Other codenames swirling around include Sabre, Sun, and Ace, although we would be surprised to see more than two handsets included in this initial rollout.

 

From these particular advertisements, it seems like Nokia is trying to position its Windows Phonesas companions for life daily adventures. This feels somewhat in contrast to Microsoft initial ad campaign for last year US WP7 launch, where the major selling point of the operating system was its supposed ability to minimize the amount of time spent fiddling with your handset.

 

 

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S there were some of you who felt disappointed by it but there appears to be a lot of people who are very, very happy with it. The next Apple smartphone went on pre-order last Friday for ATT, Sprint and Verizon and Apple said it has already sold more than 1 million units in 24 hours.

"We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S,"said Philip Schiller, Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, in a prepared statement. "The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do."

 

 

 

Samsung has announced that they will be releasing an update for the popular Galaxy S II smartphone that will increase the size of the on-screen application icons by 30-percent. This means that after the update the homescreen will show just three icons at the bottom and even the application menu grid will be reduced to a 3x3 grid.

While we do not know the exact reason for this but its not hard to imagine what it could be. Currently, Apple is in a legal battle with Samsung for copying the trade dress of the iPhone. After applying this update, the Galaxy S II UI will share very little similarities with the iPhone UI, making Apple complaint almost a non-issue.

Other change that this update will bring is a System Update widget. It will inform you of the current version of the software and if there are any new updates available.

 

 

There is no shortage of clock and calendar widgets in the Android Market. You can find everything from the super-sleek MIUI clocks to the highly functional Simi Clock Widget and a whole bunch of them that come with launchers and widget sets. There is always some customization I have to have, but is not possible with the widget I choose.

The widget is called Minimalistic Text, and I am going to take this opportunity to introduce you to the basic concept behind it, discuss the interface and try and walk through the creation of my own customized home screen clock widget.

 

Here is a screenshot of what the end result will look like:

First, Download it!

Install it First for Free From Android Market [Download NOW]

 

Introduction

Minimalistic Text is a desktop widget creation engine that provides you with a huge range of text snippets and a simple way to lay them out in a grid. Think of it as a typesetter block that you can populate with text characters in any combination. The app works by letting you choose a widget of whatever size you need: 1×1, 1×4, 4×1, 4×4 or anything in between.

Widgets can be accessed in one of three ways: by adding a widget on an empty home screen space, by tapping an existing Minimalistic Text widget or by tapping the app’s icon in your app drawer. The latter method gives you access to all widgets you have created, and you can then tweak them further as you please.

 

The Day Widget

While one can easily find a clock widget that shows the current weekday, month and date, I like to see where I am in the week or rather how close I am to the weekend! So lets go ahead and create a row of weekdays with the current day highlighted and top it off with the current month and date on the far right.

Start by tapping and holding on a blank area of your home screen. Select Widget, scroll down the list and choose a wide enough horizontal Minimalistic Text widget. I chose the 5×1 because my screen is set to show 5 columns. Note that what options you have will depend on the apps you have installed and more importantly your launcher of choice.

 

 

Once in the ‘App-Widget Preferences’ screen, select whether you would like the widget to have a background. If you choose to have one, you can also set the color and opacity to match your wallpaper. I am going to disable the background for this setup.

 

 

Next, scroll down to the ‘Layout’ section, tap ‘Predefined layout’ and select ‘Custom…’ at the bottom of the list. The option for ‘Custom layout’ should be enabled now.

 

 

Tap ‘Custom layout’, and let the fun begin. This is the canvas where you create your own personal masterpiece. Let’s review the interface first. The boxes at the top are the set pieces for your widget, which can run into as many columns or rows as you want. To the right are buttons to add a component, add a row, and delete the last row. At the bottom is the preview of your current setup. Tap, hold and drag each of the existing pieces down to the trash bin that appears to delete them.

 

 

Tap the + icon in the top-right to start adding your new pieces. In the tabbed pane that appears at the bottom, go to "Date", scroll horizontally through the available options till you find "Day of week bar (MON)". Tap, hold and drag it to the empty row at the top. Do this for all seven days of the week (TUE, WED, etc.), placing each one to the right of the previous piece. Swipe to scroll through the boxes at the top to see them all.

 

 

You should now have all weekdays listed next to each other without any spaces. You can add spaces or any other character between them using the "Static text" pieces in the Misc tab. Drop a "Static text" piece between two weekdays, tap it and add a space in the input field. Do this for all weekdays and finish off by adding the month and date at the end of the row, divided by a bar using static text again.

 

Thats about it. Go back and tap OK on the main preferences screen to add the widget to your home screen.

The Time Widget

Lets move on to the actual clock now. Tap and hold the home screen again, and add another horizontal Minimalistic Text widget. Repeat the steps from the last time to create a custom layout, and this time add the following pieces:

• Battery level
• Hour (12h, 2 digits)
• Static text with a semi-colon (:) in the input field
• Minute (2 digits)
• AM/PM

Limitless Possibilities

Now that we have the setup we need, its time to customize the look & feel of the widgets. Tap one of the widgets to go back to the Preferences screen. There are a whole bunch of functions at your disposal to make the minimalistic text render the way you need. Here’s a quick rundown:

1. Background: As I mentioned before, you can decide to have a background of any color and transparency for the widget
2. Alignment: You can choose the alignment for the entire widget block as well as individual text blocks
3. Text Style: You can have three different text styles – normal, accented and non-accented – which can be assigned to individual text blocks. Within each, you have the option to choose the font family (serif, sans-serif, etc.), style, color, size, blur.
4. Shadow: Once everything is set up, you can go in and play with the shadow settings to make the text look like it is hovering over the screen or embedded inside in letterpress style. The screenshot below shows the setup for the letterpress effect in my clock:

 

We have already told you The Times is going for the Android smartphone users. Like thats not enough, they have launched a special version of the application optimized for those of you with Honeycomb tablets. Needless to say, the new app takes advantage of larger screens modern tablets rock, putting more information on a single page.

 

Of course, this is not a 100-percent free deal, though you can try out The Times Honeycomb app free for 30 days. After that period, you will need to subscribe to keep getting all of the content, including articles, photos and video dispatches.

 

 

 

The mobile varient of this smash indy title, until now had only been available to Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY owners, but the exclusivity deal has run its course and, following an update to the app, availability has been blown wide open.

As of yesterday, Minecraft Pocket Edition is available to all droid owners, providing they’re sporting a device running Android 2.1 or higher. As we have explained before the mobile-flavored Minecraft follows in the footsteps of the full fat computer version creative mode, with no mobs to speak of and infinite block generation.

The proviso with the new availablilty is that the game will remain "PLAY optimised", this is simply a way of saying that the hardware controls of the PLAY are probably nicer to use than that of the touch screen UI, but from personal experience, the gameplay is not really watered down much by such a shortcoming.

 

 

Music Player and Google+ app from a build of Ice Cream Sandwich discovered by one of their readers, nicknamed Geek Vundotra, who also happens to be a Verizon employee.

Moving on to the actual apps, as you can see the Music app has received a facelift and looks a lot better. Personally, I am not a big fan of 3.0 app thats available for Gingerbread and Honeycomb right now because it looks like its trying too hard to look cool.

It looks cleaner and more focused. It also dumps the grey/green look for a uniform blue theme. The album art is shown much bigger now than before. The presence of the search key is due to the lack of a physical search button on the Nexus Prime and future ICS devices.

 

 

The v2.0 of Google+ app is much simpler in comparison. Just like the current app, it uses a minimalistic and straightforward UI. But there is one notable change in the app. Recently, Google renamed Huddle to Messenger. Apparently, they are not satisfied with that name so they renamed it to Chords, for reasons best known to Google.

 

 

After the delay to the Samsung/Google "Unpacked" event another piece of Nexus Prime/Ice Cream Sandwich goodness has been leaked.

The above screenshot and the video below show the very cool looking boot animation taken from P3Droid Motorola Droid Bionic, which he has running a leaked ROM of ICS destined for the Nexus Prime.

 

Video Below!

 

 

 

US customers have been exposed to the term 4G in marketing material for a while now. The problem is some 4G technologies are more legitimate than others. With carriers like T-Mobile and ATT marketing certain devices as 4G from their existing lines and now with AT&T rolling out their LTE infrastucture, confusion is bound to ensue.

Despite such confusion however AT&T show no sign of changing tack with respect to all things 4G. In fact this latest development raises eyebrows and to some extent their latest move almost impresses us. AT&T are apparently working with Apple in an attempt to have their version of the upcoming iPhone 4S to display a 4G icon in the status bar.

 

 

 

Things are working up nicely for ATT and Apple with the carrier announcing hitting the 200,000 pre-orders milestone in the first 12 hours, making for their most successful iPhone launch ever. Here is the Official Statement:

"ATT has seen extraordinary demand for iPhone 4S with more than 200,000 preorders in the first 12 hours alone, the most successful iPhone launch we've ever had. Its obvious customers like ATT 4G network, which is the only one that lets their iPhone download twice as fast and talk and surf simultaneously."

 

 

 

 

 

Motorola upcoming smartphone for Sprint has just been leaked. Named the Motorola Admiral or the XT603, the phones comes with a military-certification, which hints at the origin of the name.

The Admiral has a portrait QWERTY design, not unlike the Motorola DROID Pro. However, the Admiral is quite unattractive and is not going to win any beauty contests any time soon. The phones is expected to have a 3.1-inch VGA display, 1.2GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8655, 5 megapixel camera with 720p video recording, 1,860mAh battery and Motorola custom UI running atop Android 2.3.

 

 

 

 

Steve Jobs passed away just a day after the iPhone 4S launch and reports now reveal that Apple execs may have known about Jobs condition during the event but had put on brave faces to carry on the show. According to Palo Alto police department spokeswoman Sandra Brown, Apple had informed police that Jobs was close to passing just days before Apple official statement.

 

Since Jobs lived in a modest home on a public street open to pedestrians and without any gates or security, Apple contacted the police department ahead of time so that they could be prepared in case people were to gather in mass around the home upon hearing the news that Jobs had passed.

"Here is a guy who is a billionaire and lives in a regular neighborhood, not behind a gated estate with all the security guards" said former Apple employee Bruce Gee, who drove up to the home. "On Halloween, people go trick or treating there like everyone else."

 

 

 

 

Lenovo newest Android-powered tablet is called the IdeaPad A1 and was unveiled at the beginning of September during IFA. The IdeaPad A1 is Lenovo first 7-inch offering, and it comes with some decent specs and great pricing. However, the whole package is a bit let down by software. See, the Lenovo IdeaPad A1 runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread for reasons that are beyond us. Android 3.2 Honeycomb is readily available now, and it is the tablet-optimized version of Google mobile operating system.

Anyway, if you do not mind the phone-focused operating system, you may be quite happy with this tablet. It comes with a 7-inch 1024×600 touchscreen, a 1 GHz processor, a 5 MP rear camera and a 2 MP front-facing camera, 512 MB of RAM, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.

 

 

Its not that often to see carriers slashing the prices of their phones. Quite the contrary, usually its the third-party retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Wirefly that try to compete by cutting their margins to get customers on board. In that sense, today deal is an exception with AT&T offering the HTC HD7S for a single penny.

 

At the moment I am writing this, the HD7S is still running the original version of the Windows Phone. The Mango update Windows Phone 7.5 is scheduled to be released around the middle of October when you will get all the additional features.