White Samsung Galaxy Nexus coming in February to the UK

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  • January 5, 2012 at 9:19 am

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White Samsung Galaxy Nexus back and side

Depending on which side of the yin and yang debacle you fall into, you might have a color preference between black and white. So if you feel that you are better expressed by a white smartphone, and if that smartphone would be by any chance a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich then you’re in luck.

The as far as now all black and grey Samsung Galaxy Nexus will soon be released in white according to a number of UK retailers. Both Clove and MobileFun UK have the smartphone on release for the 6th of February for around £500 ($780)

Despite any deep emotions you might have towards the lighter end of the tone curve, you might want to check out our lengthy review of the Galaxy Nexus before taking the plunge.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Active survives decathlon of torture (video)

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  • January 4, 2012 at 4:12 pm

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Sony Ericsson Xperia Active hit with hammer

We are suckers for rugged gadgets. Our lives are hectic enough and our minds are filled with all kinds of worries, like keeping you informed on all the latest gadgets, to have to worry about pampering our smartphones. We loved the Motorola Defy+ in our recent review, because of the convenience in having such a rugged phone.

Sony Ericsson’s rugged Android smartphone is called the Xperia Active. It’s a small 3-inch device with a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor running Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Someone who either loves or hates his Sony Ericsson Xperia Active immensely, has gone to great lengths to torture-test the device. First, dunking it into a street puddle, then stubbing it with a swiss army knife, a cutter, a screwdriver and a chisel and finally hitting it with a hammer and a wrench. If that wasn’t enough to make you close your eyes and look away in pain, the last test involves driving over the Xperia Active and a potato with a Jeep Wrangler; guess which one survives! All three videos are after the break.
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Samsung Galaxy M Style is a mid-range Android smartphone with a 4-inch Super AMOLED display

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  • January 4, 2012 at 12:20 pm

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Samsung Galaxy M Style 4-inch Super AMOLED Android smartphone

We guess that ‘M’ stands for mid-range in Samsung’s latest Android smartphone the Samsung Galaxy M Style. The smartphone has just been released in South Korea and has some interesting specs. First off you have the 4-inch Super AMOLED display and 9.9mm slim design (0.39 inches). You also get a DMB TV tuner, 4GB of storage and a 1,650 mAh battery. However, that’s where the fun stops, as the phone has only a 3-megapixel main camera and VGA front camera, 1GHz single-core processor and is running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

The entire device measures 122.5 x 63 x 9.9 mm and will be available in platinum silver, blue black and lavender pink for the equivalent of around $500 without a contract. It’s priced below Samsung’s high-end devices like the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Nexus.

There are no news whether the device will launch beyond Samsung’s home market.
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Apple iPhone 4S coming to China and 26 other markets from 13th of January

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  • January 4, 2012 at 11:47 am

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Apple iPhone 4S white - left side

Apple will soon be further tapping the incredible expanse that is the Chinese market with its iPhone 4S smartphone. China Unicom, the country’s third-largest mobile carrier, has been the sole iPhone provider in China thus far, though it’s uncertain whether the iPhone 4S will now also be taken up by other carriers in the country. Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that response for Apple’s products in China has been off the charts. China contributed to roughly 13.3 percent of Apple’s total third-quarter revenue of $28.57 billion.

In addition to China, the iPhone 4S will be made available in 26 other countries beginning Friday, January 13: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.
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1 million Samsung Galaxy Note devices shipped, US release in 2012

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  • December 29, 2011 at 5:16 am

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Samsung Galaxy Note event

Samsung has had a lot of success shipping its Android devices en masse. The Samsung Galaxy S II has broken all kinds of sales records and we are pretty sure the Galaxy Nexus is flying off the shelves now too. An unlikely win for the company, however, is the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note which falls somewhere between the being a smartphone and tablet.

It seems that the mantra ‘bigger is better’ is working out for Samsung, which has shipped over one million Galaxy Notes since its release in late October. Sales have been going well and are on the rise in Europe and Asia. US consumers have been importing the Galaxy Note from other markets but the announcement mentions that the device will launch officially on the other side of the Atlantic in 2012. No mention yet if it bring support for LTE however.
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Unannounced Motorola Driod 4 makes a cameo appearance on Best Buy website

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  • December 29, 2011 at 4:31 am

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Motorola Droid 4 on Best Buy marketing material

Verizon is mum about the Motorola Droid 4, nevertheless the still unannounced handset has made an informal appearance on Best Buy’s website. The Android smartphone will launch, hopefully sometime soon, on Verizon’s 4G LTE network and as far as we know it will run Gingerbread on launch, though Ice Cream Sandwich is a possibility.

It will be sporting a 4.0-inch qHD (960×540) display, a Droid RAZR styled front body with tapered edges and a QWERTY slide-out keyboard. This will be Motorola’s first LTE slider. A 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM will help the Droid 4 to chuck along.
Expect a rumored 1785mAh battery and 8MP camera to complete the package.
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Panasonic to enter the world smartphone market with an ultra-thin 4.3-inch OLED Android device in 2012

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  • December 11, 2011 at 5:39 pm

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Panasonic Android 4.3-inch OLED Android prototype back

South Korean and Taiwanese companies have been making it big in the world of smartphones. At the same time Japanese consumer electronic giants only have a presence in their home country. I’ve been meaning to write a post about this for some time, and it would have gone something like this. Japanese companies like Panasonic and Sharp make great devices, absolutely fantastic hardware. A while back I was a devotee of Sharp feature phones, but then they slowly disappeared from non-Asian markets. So what was keeping Japanese phones away from international markets? Software. They had the hardware ironed out but it was impossible to write software for any number of markets.

The takeaway of my imaginary article was that the rapid emergence of Android presented a great opportunity for Japanese giants to finally make a comeback. It doesn’t guarantee them success however. HTC churns out great devices by the dozen, and Samsung is currently the most popular Android manufacturer. Japanese companies have been finding it more difficult to sell their quality wares abroad as people increasingly go for value for money rather than high-end products. For example Panasonic, which makes great TV sets, is taking a beating from Samsung on flat panel sales.
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Verizon Galaxy Nexus offered a 2100mAh extended battery

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  • December 7, 2011 at 12:57 pm

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Verizon Galaxy Nexus 2,100mAh extended battery and cover

We’ve been reviewing the Galaxy Nexus and we’ve found battery life to be quite decent for an Android device. However, if you want to squeeze every last minute possible out of your new favorite gadget, then Verizon is offering an extended battery for the LTE version of the smartphone. The Verizon-bound 4G LTE Galaxy Nexus comes with a 1,850mAh battery as standard but for $49.99 you can get the 2,100mAh extended battery, which you see above. That’s only a 13.5% increase in capacity but that could mean the difference between getting through a whole day with one charge or not, depending on your usage.

During our tests with the GSM HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus, we could consistently get by for around 15 hours and 30 minutes until battery went below 15%, and that was with the screen on for 2h 30m, not bad at all. A 13.5% increase in capacity could mean around 2 more hours of usage. The GSM Galaxy Nexus only comes with a 1,750mAh battery as standard but the LTE version, because of its radio, presumably consumes more battery.
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Samsung Galaxy Nexus complete review

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  • December 5, 2011 at 6:41 pm

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus in hand - on homescreen

There has been a lot of buzz around the release of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and that has mostly centered on the fact that this is the first smartphone to carry the latest (and greatest) iteration of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (‘ICS’). Similar to previous Nexus devices, it acts as Google’s launch device for a major Android version.

What one must understand is that this is a mass adoption device rather than a super high-end smartphone. It lacks the exotic materials found in other high-end phones and features such as Bluetooth 4.0, GLONASS satellite navigation or an advanced camera.

Nevertheless, it’s a well-executed device, albeit a few early teething problems. The Galaxy Nexus features a sharp 4.65-inch Super AMOLED 720p display and a fast dual-core 1.2GHz processor. It’s also a pure Google Android experience smartphone, without any user interface customizations such as HTC’s Sense or Samsung’s TouchWiz, which is important for some.

Most importantly, it’s the only device to officially run Ice Cream Sandwich, for a while, and similar to past Nexus devices, it will be the first smartphone to receive future software updates as they are released by Google — at least until the next Nexus device is launched. Although the Galaxy Nexus might not be bleeding edge with regards to hardware features, it will be cutting edge on software, which, can be argued, is more important.

This review is an in-depth look at the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and centers on the device’s hardware features, real-life performance, as well as what’s new in Android Ice Cream Sandwich. We will further cover Android Ice Cream Sandwich in more detail in a future review. So read on for our opinion on the latest and greatest Android smartphone.
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Galaxy Nexus volume bug could be hardware related, UK retailed holds off shipments (video)

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  • November 22, 2011 at 6:35 pm

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Galaxy Nexus 'volume bug' on 2G GSM 900 network

We’ve seen it time and time again. New devices generally have teething issues, though many of these can be patched with a software update, others have more serious hardware problems. The iPhone 4 had the infamous ‘antennagate’ issue, the HTC Sensation its own Wi-Fi deathgrip and it seems the Galaxy Nexus is now joining the ranks of not so smooth product launches.

The smartphone went on sale in the UK last week, and a number of users are reporting that the phone’s volume controls behave erratically when it’s transmitting on a 2G network at GSM 900 (900Mhz). This ‘volume bug’ could be a result of radio interference on the 900Mhz band and it has been replicated by placing another phone on 2G GSM 900 next to the Galaxy Nexus. The bug is quite serious because it can mute your phone’s ringer and notifications.

Most of Europe, Africa, Middle East, Australia and most of Asia use the GSM 900 band, so the number of users that could be affected is huge. Affected Galaxy Nexus devices behave normally when connected to 3G networks, so a temporary fix would be to force the phone to only connect on 3G, but that means you will be left without a signal where 3G connectivity is not available.
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HTC Rezound 2,750mAh extended battery, worth it if you can live with the thickness

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  • November 16, 2011 at 3:57 am

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HTC Rezound extended battery and back cover

We’ve covered all these before, you get a brand new shiny smartphone with a large gorgeous display, like the HTC Rezound’s 4.3-inch 1280×720 retina display, and of course you don’t want to put it down. You browse the net and your social networks, you play a quick game, and by mid-day you realize that the battery is down. You then have to choose between being tethered to a wall outlet all the time, stop using your device as much, or get an extended or external battery.

Marchello from Htcpedia chose the latter for his HTC Rezound, and we would too. The Rezound comes with a ridiculously small 1,620mAh battery for such a large device. Thankfully HTC offers a 2,750mAh extended battery, but that comes with two caveats. First, you have to shell out around $50 for the extended battery and second, it’s so large that the battery comes with an extended cover to accommodate the larger battery. The extended battery makes the Rezound quite thick, at around 3/4 of an inch, but also lets you go through a whole day of use without having to worry about recharging your phone.
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Samsung Galaxy Nexus release date slips past the 21st of November in the UK and Europe?

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  • November 10, 2011 at 7:35 am

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Android Ice Cream Sandwich Galaxy Nexus

There’s a lot of anticipation for the release of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and that is no small part because it will be the first smartphone to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich — you might want check out our guide of what ICS has to offer.

Samsung confirmed the 17th of November as the official release date of the Galaxy Nexus in the UK and Europe two weeks ago during their Galaxy Note promotional event in London. It seems that this date has now been pushed forward to the 21st. Handtec, an online UK mobile device retailer, has posted on its blog that it has received confirmation from Samsung distribution that the Galaxy Nexus will arrive to retailers in the week commencing 21st of November, here is their original post:
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Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core mobile chip revealed: more power, better battery life (video)

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  • November 9, 2011 at 5:23 pm

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Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core mobile chip

The Nvidia Tegra 2 monopolized Android Honeycomb tablets this year and we already knew that Nvidia had a successor in the works with the codename ‘Kal-El’. Today Nvidia has come clean with a host of new details on the project and the official Tegra 3 name, and yes mark it down as the first mobile quad-core CPU, yeah ever.

Nvidia is claiming that the new Tegra 3 chip will offer up to five times the performance of the Tegra 2 with its 1.3GHz quad-core Cortex A9 processor and three times the graphics performance with a new 12-core graphics unit. What’s more interesting is that Nvidia has included a fifth, low-power 0 to 500MHz “companion core”. When you don’t need the power afforded by the quad-core unit, the companion core takes over, taking care of light-weight tasks, like listening to music, or during standby. The chip is also intelligent enough to scale the main 4 cores between single, dual and quad-core modes on demand as well.
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