29/01/2013: Apple announce 128GB iPads to compete with the Surface Pro, BB10 in polls and the ZTE Blade C! Plus much more!

Apple announce the iPad will be available in 128GB models!

   Apple has only traditionally offered their devices in 16, 32 and 64GB versions, until today! Today the guys from Cupertino revealed that a new larger capacity iPad, with the same specs as the current fourth generation devices!

   It's interesting that Apple has chosen to bump up the storage offerings at this exact moment. It may well have something to do with those 128GB Surface Pro's which are right around the corner, but we doubt Apple would ever admit to that. We're not entirely sure those are head-to-head devices either, iOS isn't quite OSX and the Surface Pro tablets offer fully fledged Windows. Not to mention the Surface Pro tablets make the smaller storage options for iPads look relatively cheap too!

   But, nonetheless people always ask for extra storage and now we have it! You can get the 128GbB Wifi-only iPad for $799 (£639) or the 3G one can be yours for $929 (£739). Are you interested? Let us know in the comments below!

   

The press release is available here.

BB10 looks good according to poll.

   Everyone's looking forward to seeing exactly what RIM will be showing off tomorrow and if a poll of American's from YouGov and Bite Interactive is a representative one then quite a fair few other people are looking forward to the release of the operating system too!

   According to a poll of 1,127 adults who were told about the known features of the upcoming BB10 handsets nearly half of the participants found at least one of the improvements compelling and a total of one in eight said they would happily consider buying a BB10 device. With this last stat we're not sure whether it's a good or bad one really, but one in one hundred people polled said they have firm intentions to pick up a BB10 device right from the off. 

   The main issue people are concerned with here is that consumers are already invested in either iOS or Android and Microsoft already know how hard it is to get people to change their OS after attempts to push BB10. What about you? Are you interested in picking a BB10 phone up or will you try to pick up a cheap Playbook to get your BB10 fix?
Via PhoneArena.

In other news:

• Samsung has today acquired NeuroLogica! They're a company that specializes in medical imaging! Things such as manufacturing portable computed tomography (CT) scanners and other medical instruments! This investment is part of Samsung's plan to become one of the world’s leading medical equipment companies by 2020!
  Via Slashgear.

• HTC have called a press conference at 3pm on Tuesday 19 February! This means that the guys from Taiwan are going to try to get a little jump start over the rest of the competition who will be demoing phones during MWC itself! The event will take place simultaneously in New York, but we're not currently sure who will be where!

• The Nexus 4 is in stock in select stores around the world at the moment. Germany, America and Canada have them and the bumpers in stock, we can't imagine that'll last too long though! Get going!
  Via PhoneArena.

• YouTube may soon be charging you to watch certain channels and shows on the website. According to Adage, Google are going to trial it on around about 25 channels! A Google spokesperson said, "we have long maintained that different content requires different types of payment models. The important thing is that, regardless of the model, our creators succeed on the platform."
  Via TheVerge.

• XBMC have released version 12 of their media center software. The update now means that there is full support for Android and the Raspberry Pi so you can get this running on any of those new USB Android computers. There's a tonne of new features as well! You can get check out the full details on XBMC's website here!
  Via Slashgear.

• Google now have a few details about North Korea's road on Google Maps. We're not sure if this has something to do with Eric Schmidt's recent visit to the country, but there's still no Street View and we'll be surprised if we see that any time soon!
  Via Hothardware.

And finally, ZTE will soon be releasing their new Blade C on the world. This will be the third in the series which you might know better for being called the Orange San Francisco's! According to UnwiredView the device will arrive with a 4 inch WVGA display, 3G, 3MP rear camera, Bluetooth 4.0, a dual-core 1 GHz MediaTek MTK 6577 processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal memory, and a 1,600 mAh battery. This isn't a bad set of specs for a phone which will cost somewhere in the range of $112 off contract (That's €84 or around about £72).

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10/01/2013: RIM to offer 6 BB10 devices and 3 US carriers will offer them! Nokia Q4 results look good! Amazon announces AutoRip and much more!

RIM confirm at least 6 BB10 devices at different price points are coming as US carriers confirm they'll offer them!

   RIM's Chief Marketing Officer, Frank Boulben, gave away some interesting details when he agreed to an interview with Fierce Wireless at CES.    

   Boulben explained how RIM was planning to offer at least six new phones running BB10 this year each of which will target a different market segment. We already know quite a bit about the first two which will be come along at the end of this month through all of the leaks! Boulben's exact words were:

"We intend over time as we transition the portfolio to have a full range of devices."

   He also confirmed that BB10 phones are currently being tested by 150 carriers around the world, which is a heck of a lot of people that will have the opportunity to pick up one of these phones when they launch! He even went as far as saying that “They [the carriers] very much believe that we can be the third platform.” We're sure Nokia and Microsoft might have something to say about that (See the next article below!). 

   If you're an app conscious sort of person then fear not as RIM will have a pretty impressive 70,000 apps for you to download from day one! These devices also try to satisfy both consumers and businesses and as such they will be the first smartphones to offer new features like BlackBerry Balance, something which allows you to separate business and leisure apps!

   The second part of this story is that Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all have plans to carry the BB10 range even if it's slightly tentative at the moment! 

   Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said “We’re hopeful its going to be a good device... We’ll carry it.” AT&T were considerably more hesitant saying that they would offer the device, but more to keep upgraders happy then to attract new customers. Their CMA David Christopher said, “It’s logical to expect our current [BlackBerry] customers will have the best BlackBerry devices to choose from in the future.” T-Mobile seemed most positive, but that might just be their CEO, John Legere's personality coming through! He said, “We’re extremely optimistic that it’s going to be a successful product... our business customers are extremely interested in it.” Again the 'un-carrier' wasn't convinced it would be popular with consumers!

   Nonetheless there is currently 79 million of you out there rocking your Blackberry's so RIM is confident that people will pick up a BB10 phone when they're ready to upgrade! What do you think? Excited about the launch? Let us know in the comments below!

Via Reuters and Fierce Wireless.

Nokia announce better than expected Q4 results: 4.4 million Lumia's left the shelves!

   With the future of RIM just a few weeks away we come to Nokia, a company who has already pledged their future to Windows Phone, for better or for worse. So with Windows Phone 7 the operating system wasn't really ready for the prime time. It launched without basic features like copy and paste, but these were added later. But, with Windows Phone 8 Microsoft has offered up a relatively well rounded experience, so with that surely Nokia will have sold more devices?

    In the first but of good news coming out of Nokia HQ in quite a while the sales of all their smartphone ranges are looking good. The Smart Devices unit of Nokia saw net sales of 1.2 billion euros and a total of 6.6 million devices were sold. Out of that two thirds, or 4.4 million were Lumia smartphones. Nokia shifted a total of 15.9 million units, 9.3 million of which were Asha full touch devices and 2.2 million were Symbian phones, apparently people are still buying them! Nokia's CFO, Timo Ihamuotila, did say that Q4 was the “last meaningful quarter for Symbian” sales, which is no surprise really.

   Despite a good Q4 for Nokia, they do expect things to be slightly worse in Q1, something which is a 'seasonal trend', which is business speak for everyone spent all their money over Christmas! That news wasn't enough to put investors off, as Nokia shares rose 16% following the release of "better than expected" perfomance!

   Have you got a shiny new Lumia in your hands? Does Windows Phone even interest you? Let us know in the comments below!

Nokia Via PhoneDog and IntoMobile.

In other news:

• Google is now offering all Play Store publishers the opportunity to reply to comments on their rating system! This should help make the reviews more accurate and fairer, perhaps stopping people who have a vendetta against certain apps!
  Via AndroidCommunity.

• ZTE are rumoured to be working on a new phone with an insane screen! If the rumours are to be believed then there will soon be a ZTE Nubia Z7 will have a 6.3-inch display with a jaw-dropping resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels! The rumour doesn't stop there either, the device will supposedly have an 8-core processor! We would've been inclined to believe it was possible until we saw that there's also meant to be a Mali-T658 GPU, 16MP camera, 4,000mAh battery, 128GB of storage, an LTE radio and it's supposedly running Android 5. The only bits we find hard to believe are the 128GB of storage and Android 5, but you never know we wouldn't put it past ZTE if they wanted to do it!
  Via PhoneArena.

• There's also been the Samsung Galaxy S2 Plus announced. We've chosen not to cover it because it is identical to the standard Galaxy S2 apart from the fact that there's NFC in the battery and it's running Android 4.1.2 with the Nature UX. If you're interested in finding the full details of the device head here!

• Google's Eric Schmidt and ex-New Mexico governor Bill Richardson have returned from North Korea. The pair failed to secure the release of Kenneth Bae, who is currently being held in North Korea for showing tourists across their boarder, but he is said to be in good health, despite the pair not actually meeting him. Schmidt left Korea by requesting that they consider opening up the internet and embracing technology before they find themselves in a world which they cannot catch up with! You can see the full details here!

• It's been suggested that Europe's biggest carriers could be planning to create a European super-network which would reduce the price of your roaming antics! Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile's parent), along with France Telecom (owner of Orange), Telecom Italia and Telefónica (The people behind O2) are apparently “intent on exploring the idea." This sounds like a cool concept, but don't expect this to happen soon, if at all, because there will be a lot of European red tape around something like this!
  Via Recombu.

And finally, how about this for a pretty sweet idea [UPDATE: Idea that is now a reality!]... Amazon is reportedly exploring offering the possibility of automatically adding a digital copy of the physical CD's you purchase from them to your Amazon Cloud Player! This will cut out the tedious process of ripping and uploading your songs to the web-based service and basically will make the whole process a lot easier!

CNet's reported that Amazon is currently thinking about the option of retrospectively adding the songs from your past purchases to this arrangement too, which would be great for us! We're pretty pumped to see Amazon do this and it'll be a feature which Google Music won't really be able to challenge! If you're interested in finding more details then click over here for the full run down from Amazon!

Via CNet.

   

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