CyanogenMod 9 released for Sense-less HTC One X

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  • April 29, 2012 at 12:44 pm

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Display shootout: HTC One X vs. Galaxy Nexus

I’ve been playing with the HTC One X for the past couple of weeks and switching between the Sense 4.0 skinned Android device and the Galaxy Nexus, which we’ve reviewed here, I often crave for the latter’s stock Ice Cream Sandwich experience. Don’t get me wrong, HTC has done some great work with its widgets, customizable dock and lockscreen and social integration, but you can’t beat the crave for those stock Android 4.0 neon-blues, especially on such a lovely 4.7-inch display.

There are already a number of custom ROMs for the One X, some with Sense and others without, but what about the most popular aftermarket rom of all, CyanogenMod. Well a developer has ported the latest CyanogenMod 9 (CM9) build to the Tegra 3 bearing HTC One X and released it to the public.
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New leaked Galaxy S3 photo and manual collaborate to Galaxy Nexus-style device with home button

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  • April 27, 2012 at 9:01 am

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Samsung Galaxy S3 leaked photo with home button

Another day, another Samsung Galaxy S3 (a.k.a. next Galaxy) smartphone rumor. We’ve already seen a slightly varying set of specs and some widely different purported photos of the Galaxy S III, including ones where the the phone’s insides were supposedly in a dummy case.

Today is the first time that we have two collaborating pieces of evidence. First at the top you can see a photo that was received by PhoneArena from an anonymous tipster. The first eyesore is the physical home button and fixed options/multitasking and back buttons, which go against the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich playbook.
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Samsung Galaxy S III turns up in benchmark with dual-core Exynos 4212 SoC besting the best of Android

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  • April 25, 2012 at 5:14 pm

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Samsung Galaxy SIII AnTuTu benchmark and specs

Samsung has managed to build a lot of anticipation for its next Galaxy S smartphone, the often-speculated Galaxy S III, forcing us to bunch up the almost daily rumors into lengthy weekly pieces.

With the London Unpacked event now only one week away, we’re starting to see even more evidence of the new device. It has already popped up in videos, wearing a dummy case though, and in a couple of benchmarks.

This latest leak however is pretty tasty as, if proven right, it might have given us a full list of specs for the Galaxy S III. The smartphone has now popped-up in the popular AnTuTu benchmark and has even managed to top the charts, beating the quad-core Tegra 3 powered Asus Transformer Prime tablet.
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Sad panda: HTC will favor thinness over battery life

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  • April 23, 2012 at 4:12 am

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Sad panda HTC

We were truly hoping that 2012 would be the year of all-day battery life for our gadgets. There was even good indication for that following Samsung’s commitment to the same goal and the improved efficiency of the latest generation mobile SoCs, like the NVIDIA Tegra 3, with up to 61 percent lower power consumption than Tegra 2.

As we’ve said before, manufacturers have to strike a good balance between battery life and portability, avoiding to get into the extreme thinness wars. Unfortunately however HTC seems to have been hanging out with the wrong crowd.
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Samsung Galaxy S III rumors weekend overview: hands-on video, specs and did Amazon Germany spill the beans?

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  • April 22, 2012 at 10:02 am

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Samsung Galaxy S III (dummy casing) side-by-side with Galaxy Nexus

Not a week passes without a couple of new rumors and purported leaks of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S flagship smartphone. Though Samsung hasn’t confirmed its name yet, we’ll assume for now that it will be called the Galaxy S III, following the naming convention of its predecessors.

So here’s a summary of this week’s rumors in an easy to digest form.

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GSM Galaxy Nexus IMM76I Android 4.0.4 update may fix your connectivity woes, here’s how to get it now

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  • April 22, 2012 at 4:00 am

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GSM Galaxy Nexus IMM76I Android 4.0.4 update

When finally the Android 4.0.4 IMM76D update reached GSM/HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus owners, some reported occasional GSM connectivity issues and signal loss. So after only a couple of weeks, Google is already pushing an incremental over-the-air update to Galaxy Nexus devices that maintains the Android version at 4.0.4 but improves the build number slightly at IMM76I.

As usual Google isn’t mentioning what this update improves and fixes, but users that have received the update are reporting that it does indeed fix the connectivity bug. Reports are also coming in that there could be some other minor fixes as well, but nothing confirmed yet.
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Display shootout: HTC One X vs. Galaxy Nexus (vs. iPad 3) screen comparison

FeaturedThe Lab

  • April 18, 2012 at 6:02 pm

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The two hottest Android smartphones right now are the new 4.7-inch HTC One X and the incumbent 4.65-inch Galaxy Nexus that we have reviewed in-depth here. A key hardware distinction between the two is the use of different display technologies. Both have a 720p resolution, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus features a PenTile Matrix Super AMOLED display while the HTC One X has a standard RGB Super IPS LCD2 screen. You can read more about the differences between Samsung’s PenTile Matrix technology and standard RGB here.

Now, we can easily argue that the display is probably the single most important hardware feature of any mobile device so we’ll be taking an in-depth look between the two Android smartphones. We also have a 3rd generation iPad handy with its amazingly sharp and most importantly color accurate display, so we’ll occasionally be throwing it in our comparison for good measure.
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Samsung sends invites for May 3rd event in London to unveil next Galaxy smartphone

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  • April 16, 2012 at 3:27 am

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Samsung May 3 2012 "next Galaxy" Unpacked London event invite

After a lot of speculation and plenty of possible date-throwing, Samsung has started sending out invitations for an Unpacked event on May 3rd in London. The invite just reads Come and meet the next Galaxy, so this could have possibly been any Galaxy smartphone or tablet. However, the Korean DDaily has confirmed with a Samsung official that this will be the next flagship Samsung Galaxy smartphone, a.k.a. the long-rumored Galaxy S III (though name still remains unconfirmed and Samsung could pull an Apple-type stunt and just call it Galaxy S).

Nothing more in terms of information. Though we can reiterated the standing rumors for the Galaxy S III, which include a large screened device with the first non-PenTile Super AMOLED Plus HD 720×1280 screen, a quad-core Samsung Exynos 4412 processor or the dual-core 2GHz Exynos 5250, just 7mm of thickness and some space-age material.
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Samsung Galaxy S III appears like a silver bullet slashing through the air, could sport a non-PenTile Super AMOLED Plus HD display

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  • April 5, 2012 at 3:26 am

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Samsung Galaxy S III supposed leaked shot

Certainly not the first supposed leaked image of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III that has come our way, but we thought we’d share this with you since a lot of the pieces check out, like typeface, timing, location and last but not least the handset has a very interesting design that we’ve never seen before.

The device looks like a curvy slab of metal with a large display and practically zero left and right bezel — the zero bezel for the Galaxy S III has been one of the longest standing rumors and something we would be very happy about. There are also no hardware buttons, similar to the Galaxy Nexus (check out our full review here), and a feature of handsets designed with Android Ice Cream Sandwich in mind. The device certainly looks premium enough to merit its place in the incredibly successful Galaxy S series.
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Nokia N9 gets Android Ice Cream Sandwich port thanks to Project Mayhem (video)

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  • March 24, 2012 at 3:55 am

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Nokia N9 running Android Ice Cream Sandwich

So what do you do when you end up with an awesome handset but with a dead operating system? Well you port a very much alive mobile OS to it. The Nokia N9 is running the now defunct MeeGo, which was abandoned by the Linux Foundation in favor of the HTML 5 Tizen. Owners of the polycarbonate body beauty should not despair just yet, developers are at at work, and they’ve already managed to create a pretty solid port of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for the device.

News of Project Mayhem, as it’s called, broke a few weeks ago when the first images of a Nokia N9 running Android ICS appeared, but now a developer has released the first Alpha version of the port, which anyone can download and try-out — at their own risk of course. The port even allows Nokia N9 owners to dual-boot between MeeGo and Android 4.0.3.
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Sony airs first stop-motion animation ad directed by Wes Anderson showing us how mobile phones really work

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  • March 22, 2012 at 4:09 pm

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Sony "Made of Imagination" ad by Wes Anderson

Sony has just released the first ad in its new “Made of Imagination” campaign set to promote the company’s Xperia smartphones. Sony enlisted the help of director and writer Wes Anderson — if you haven’t watched his movies you’re missing some of the most incredible and quirky films of all time. Wes is responsible for The Royal Tenenbaums, Darjeeling Limited and last, but not least, the stop-motion classic Fantastic Mr. Fox.

In creating the Sony ads, Wes interviewed the most imaginative amongst us, a bunch of kids that is, and used his stop-motion animation experience to bring their ideas to life. Children were asked how they believe Sony’s Xperia handsets work and this first ad comes courtesy of 8-year-old Jake Ryan. We don’t wanna spoil it for you, so lets just say that what makes the device tick are hundreds of tiny little robots.
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Sony Xperia S 4.3-inch Android smartphone is shipping now globally

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  • March 21, 2012 at 4:49 pm

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Sony Xperia S - transparent strip close-up

The Sony Xperia S began its lengthy road to the market back in November, when it was it was initially known as the Nozomi. Well the Playstation-certified Android smartphone has finally started shipping today to retailers globally.

We have to admit that the Xperia S is one of the best looking smartphones out there, thanks to its unique translucent navigation bar running along the bottom half — though still not as good looking as the Xperia Glass concept.
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The pieces fit, could this finally be the Samsung Galaxy S III getting ready for a May 22 announcement?

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  • March 17, 2012 at 10:50 am

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Samsung Galaxy S III leak

We’ve been hearing a lot about the Samsung Galaxy S III, the successor to the incredibly popular Galaxy S II smartphone. There have been numerous rumors on its release date and several very fake renders of the device. Now we are sharing the above image, which appeared on Reddit this morning, because it certainly looks more credible than whatever we’ve seen so far — note we’ve cleaned-up the original image a bit and you can click to enlarge.

First off, we have what seems to be a photo of a projected image on a screen, rather than a ‘perfect’ render. Then, there is the logo of PR firm Weber Shandwick, with which Samsung has been working with in different regions. The actual device follows what we’ve been hearing so far, i.e. a very slim left and right bezel (and you know how much we loath big bezels) and a very slim profile, perhaps even just 7mm thick.
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