MobileFun put the 2014 HTC One up for pre-order: Is this what we can expect?

   Today the UK retailer, MobileFun, may just have blown the surprise on this year's HTC One. The much anticipated device has cropped up on a pre-order page on their website so it's hard to be sure if this is entirely accurate or not. While the company will be stocking the device they may have just made a mock-up of the page to save themselves some time when the phone actually launches, or alternatively someone has made quite the mistake.

   The website has the phone up for a pre-order price of £580, which is a bit expensive and subject to change, but here's what that money will supposedly get you. 

• 5" HD Super LCD3display with Gorilla Glass.
• 32GB of on-board storage.
• Android 4.4.2 KitKat.
• A Quad-core 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800.
• Wi-Fi, WiFi Direct, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, microUSB, GPS, NFC
• Dual 5MP cameras on the back with autofocus, LED flash, HDR video 1080p@30fps and secondary 2.1MP camera, HDR video 720@30fps.

   All round this seems like a solid package, the only other thing we'd like to know is the size of the battery and whether or not it will be removable, but that will come in time and we don't know for sure that these specs are correct anyway.

   What do you guys think? Would you be happy to own a new HTC One if it looked like this? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and don't forget to check out the screen grabs either!

MobileFun Via Twitter (Dave Thornton).

Click to enlarge.

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Acer's 8 inch Iconia W3 Windows 8 tablet is officially official after a flood of leaks!

    We've seen this tablet more times than we can count, but now it's official, the Acer Iconia W3 will be one of the first 8 inch Windows 8 powered tablets on the market!

   The device features an 8.1 inch backlit LED display with a 1280 x 800p resolution, with support for 720p video playback. The device will be powered by Intel's dual-core 1.8GHz Atom Z2760 processor. Acer haven't said how much RAM is on board, but we would hope and we assume it's 2GB, but we don't know. Thankfully though Acer have managed to fit in 32GB or 64GB of storage depending on your budget and needs and there's the option to add a 32GB SD card if you need it.

    Acer have given this little tablet the majority of the things it will need with Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, and front and back 2-megapixel cameras. It's really nice to see the inclusion of a micro-HDMI port and micro-USB ports so that you can connect this device to TV's or projectors for presentations and you can plug in a mouse and keyboard if you choose not to buy Acer's own offerings.

   You can pick up this device this month for £280 or 329 euros for 32GB and £340 or 379 euros for 64GB. You can also opt for the keyboard which you can see in the image above and that might be a smart move because it's purposefully designed for this tablet, but it will add £58 to your order, or you could just get the grey or white cases to protect the device, which cost £22 and £24 respectively!

   By way of an added bonus the device comes loaded with full Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013, which makes it a lot more appealing!
Via PocketLint.

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Acer announce the Liquid S1 'phablet'.

   Where Samsung takes Android it seems everyone else follows and the latest people to have a go at cracking the 'phablet' arena are Acer. The Taiwanese company have today announced their latest smartphone and it's the Liquid S1, which is essentially a budget phablet.

   In terms of what you'll be getting here there's a 720p 5.7-inch display taking centre stage, that should be pushed along comfortably by a 1.5GHz quad-core processor from the guys at MediaTek. That package will be backed up by 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, which mercifully is MicroSD expandable with cards of up to 32GB in size. 

   As you would expect there's a solid 8MP camera on the rear and a front-facing webcam too. The debice has all of the connectivity options you'd expect from this sort of handset and there's BlueTooth, WiFi and 3G connections, with support for dual-SIM cards.

   Our one concern would be that the tiny 2,400 mAh battery might not, as Acer say, 'last a day' and that tiny cell may well cripple this phone.

  If that doesn't phase you then the device will be available with its aluminium side grips in matte black or white colourings in the third quarter of the year and it will cost around €349 or £298 ($455)  when it lands in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Ukraine, Russia, UK and Germany, and later in Spain and Italy. 

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Samsung announce the Galaxy Tab 3 8-inch!

   We knew Samsung would have some tablets on the way for us, but it seems like they've waited until the first day of Computex to tell us. The first of their new tablets is the Tab 3 8.0: it's a mid-range device with pretty much everything you want from a nicely-sized tablet too!

   The 8 inch display has a solid 1280 x 800p resolution, making the ppi 189. The unspecified brand of processor inside is a dual-core model clocked at 1.5 GHz, this will be backed up by 1.5 GB of RAM and your choice of 16 or 32 GB of internal storage which is MicroSD expandable.

   Around the back you'll find a 3MP camera for all those holiday snaps this summer, you can Skype home from your destination of choice with a 1.3MP front-facing camera and all of this is powered by a nice big 4450 mAh battery.

   As bonus additions there's Touchwiz-ed Android 4.2 on board and there is an option which will have 3G and LTE connectivity too! At the moment there's no word on pricing or availability and the full spec sheet is embedded below

Click to enlarge.

The press release is embedded below:

Next-generation GALAXY tablets integrate intuitive new features
and enhanced performance for all


SEOUL, Korea, June 03, 2013 - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, today announced the introduction of the GALAXY Tab 3 8-inch and 10.1-inch which will be available globally beginning of June. Offering an expanded range of options along with previously announced 7-inch version, the GALAXY Tab 3 Series provides customers various ways to view, listen, create, and share meaningful events and special content with those who matter most. Whether surfing the web at home or reading during the commute, each device is packed with enhanced content and intuitive design perfect for viewing or sharing content with friends and family, and capturing all of life’s spontaneous moments.

Samsung GALAXY Tab 3 8-inch
  • Exceptional Reading and Entertainment Experience: Designed to be held in one hand, the new GALAXY Tab 3 8-inch
   is the optimal device for viewing videos, playing enhanced games, and reading e-Books anytime, anywhere.
   Outstanding slim bezel for effective and maximum screen use makes Samsung’s “reading mode” technology
   which optimizes the display to deliver perfect illumination and tone for comfortable paperlike readability in a variety of
   lighting conditions work better on its 8-inch screen. Samsung’s Sound Alive for Audio and Dolby Surround for Video
   Play maximize every sound allow users to enjoy clearer dialogue, consistent volume levels, and superior audio to
   further enhance the overall multimedia experience with the new device. Also, the physical keys on the bezel at
   bottom give users a comfortable smartphone-like experience in navigating.
  • Enhanced Smart Usability: Making travel and discovery more effortless, the GALAXY Tab 3 8-inch features S
   Translator, which provides instant translation through voice recognition and via text on applications including email,
   text message, and ChatON. This instant translation is possible both from speech-to-text and text-to-speech,
   ensuring that you can communicate with ease while traveling internationally. Also, S Travel, the Smart Travel
   Companion, provides real-time local information in need for travel along with user's travel paths. Users can get
   information and make reservation of the places classified in various categories such as Place, Hotel, Tickets, Food
   and Forum, and more. In addition, intuitive features such as Story Album and Group Play also allow users more ways
   to instantly share and enjoy music, photos, documents, and games with those around them.

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Are these the specs for the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini?

Click to enlarge.

   By now it's pretty clear that Samsung will be showing off a fair few phones at their event on the 20th of June in London. If the rumours are correct then one of those phones will be the Galaxy S4 Mini and it'll undoubtedly be a big seller because of the relatively low price and the obvious naming similarity to the bigger and considerably more powerful bigger brother.

   Now we've already seen 'leaks' which show what the phone could look like and today there's a new rumour that this device will be relatively powerful too. From the benchmarks above you can see that there is meant to be a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, 1.5GB of RAM, an 8 mega-pixel rear camera and a 2.1 mega-pixel front option, which is said to be able to manage 1080p video

   There's also meant to be that qHD 960 x 540 p screen which will hopefully do Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean some justice. Hopefully we'll have a real confirmation for the device on June the 20th which isn't too long to wait really!
AllAboutSamsung Via Engadget.

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Samsung's budget Galaxy Young set to land in the UK this weekend!

    A year ago Samsung released their first Galaxy Y, it was a budget handset which was aimed at children just entering their teenage years who wanted something which could play Angry Birds and which wasn't going to break the piggy bank if it was dropped and thrown about a bit. That device did a relatively good job and so Samsung are back with an updated version, which is this time called the Samsung Galaxy Young!

   It's a 3.3-inch smartphone which will be landing in the UK as early as this weekend! This time the screen gets a resolution bump from last years 320 x 240p screen to something which is a bit more acceptable and so there will be 480 x 320 pixels this time around. On that screen you'll be able to get to grips with Samsung's Touchwizzed version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which will be kept ticking over by a 1GHz processor. Samsung chose not to declare how many cores it has so it's fair to assume it has one and that's paired with 768MB of RAM, which to be honest isn't too shabby at all!

   This time too Samsung realised how crippling the internal storage was on the last model and this time it has been increased by a couple of powers and there's 4GB this time, which still isn't the biggest allowance, but for this sort of phone it should be great. Not to worry though as there's an SD Card slot which supports cards up to 64GB!

   The camera won't be filling up much of that storage though, with the 3MP sensor only giving you pictures with maximum resolutions of 640 x 480, which is actually pretty dire. On the plus side though this phone won't run out of juice during a normal day's usage with the 1,300mAh battery probably good enough to push two days of normal usage.

   At the moment there's no word on price, but it will be available from the Carphone Warehouse and O2 from this weekend!

Via CNet.

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Blackberry announce the Q5: Want to bring youthfulness and fun to BB10!

   Blackberry are keen to make sure that Nokia's new Lumia 925 doesn't steal the limelight today and so they've announced a new budget BB10 device and that will be known as the Q5!

   This device won't be as high-end or as expensive as the Q10 and Z10, but it will be bright colourful and is aimed squarely at the youth and budget markets! Blackberry's Thorsten Heins said that:

 “BlackBerry is excited to bring a new BlackBerry QWERTY smartphone, the BlackBerry Q5, to our customers in selected markets around world... The BlackBerry Q5 gives you the best of everything with its cutting-edge BlackBerry 10 functionality and a physical QWERTY keyboard. It is for youthful fans that are passionate, confident and bold, and it makes it easy for them to have fun, create, share and stay connected.”

   With this phone you get the best of 'touch and type' with a physical qwerty keyboard, as well as the option to use the 3.1" touchscreen for all your other needs. That screen is an LCD panel with a 720 x 720p resolution which will be powered by 1.2 GHz dual-core processor with 2GB of RAM, which should make this thing plenty fast enough for the average user. Aside from that there's a non-removable 2000 mAh battery, 8GB of internal storage which is expandable via MicroSD, 5 and 2 MP front and rear cameras respectively and just for good measure there's a micro USB port for charging, but we're not sure if can act as a USB OTG port.

   On the software front there's things like Blackberry's Story Maker, BBM with the new Video and Screen Share features and the Blackberry Hub which compliment the now relatively expansive set of apps which is on the higher side of 100,000.

   If you're interested in picking up this device then it is set to land in 'selected markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa,  Asia (including the Asia Pacific region), and Latin America' around the start of July! Oh and don't forget there's red, pink, black or white to choose from in the colour department too, the latter pairing are matte.

The full press release is available here.
Specs Via PocketLint.

[Update] Here's some pictures from the official product page for the Q5!

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Google Glass specs discovered by enterprising owner as Google update their Play Store Terms to stop updates outside of their control!

   Google have been in the news a fair bit today! It seems as though they might have something being organised with Samsung in the OLED arena, but the guys have also revealed the processor and internals of their Google Glass headset as well as updating their terms and conditions on the Play Store to make sure that people can't update their apps without going through their marketplace!

   We'll start with the internals of Google's Glass, which haven't really been confirmed as much as they've been discovered by an enterprising owner who managed to get them to boot up on ADB! His investigations led him to find that Android 4.0.4 ICS is powering the device, with a dual-core OMAP 4430 processor being back up, by what we assume is 1GB of RAM because 682MB was available while the Glasses were running! We already know that there's 16GB of internal storage and a 5MP camera, which when all is said and done, makes this a solid mid-range Android device, but there's nothing too spectacular here except for the form factor of course.

   Secondly, it seems as though Google is none too happy that Facebook has been going behind their back and updating their apps without using Google Play to provide the updates. As a result Google have updated their terms and conditions to try to make sure that this doesn't happen any more!

   When Facebook used the tactic it wasn't against Google's Terms of Service, but they've now been updated to read:

“An app downloaded from Google Play may not modify, replace or update its own APK binary code using any method other than Google Play’s update mechanism” Google Play Developer Content Policy

   This change has been made to Google's 'Dangerous Product' section of their policy, which is totally understandable because it'd be easy for people to 'spike' an app on Google Play that way. Google for their part reiterated that, "Google Play is a trusted source for Android application downloads, and we are committed to providing a secure and consistent experience" and that's what they had to do in this situation really. There's been no word from Facebook on the changes, but then again there's not much which they can say any more!
Via TheVerge and Slashgear.

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22/11/2012: Happy Thanksgiving! Is this the Blackberry London? Nexus stock checkers, YouTube on Wii U and more!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

   To our American readers we hope you're having a great day today and that you'll stomachs will be suitably full by the time the evening rolls round! We'd just like to say thank you again for using our site, we really do appreciate it, you're all great!

   If you have any suggestions or a topic you'd like us to cover in an editorial feel free to drop us a line via our contact form or hit us up on Twitter! (We're not scary honest!)

   Anyway have a great day guys and here's today's news!

Is this the upcoming Blackberry London?

   The picture above may be the first sighting we've got of RIM's upcoming BlackBerry London, or L-Series as we know it. The device is actually relatively similar to the Blackberry Dev Alpha, which you can see to the right. 

   The device, if it's definitely real, is due to be launched at a press event on the 30th of January, along with another BlackBerry 10 phone which will be equipped with a QWERTY keyboard.

   There's a good set of specs which have also been floated around which read like this:

• 4.2-inch display
• Dual-core processor
• 1GB RAM
• 16GB internal memory
• MicroSD card for memory expansion
• 8 megapixel camera

   We're really hoping RIM can deliver something which catches the attentions of websites like ours and consumers at large! The industry definitely wouldn't be the same without Blackberry's!

Via Phones4U.

In other news:

• Android Police have dug up a little website which will automatically check the stock of Google's latest set of Nexus devices in your area. Annoying we can't get the page to open at the moment but we'll take the guys word for it that it does work! Perhaps they're just have trouble with a huge influx of hits at the moment? You can see if the site works for you here.
  
  If you can't get that to work then Product-Review have found an app on Google Play which promises to let you know when there's availability! The only thing is it uses a lot of data to keep checking availability, somewhere in the region of '150MB's a month' so unless you're on Wifi or Unlimited data please be careful! You can check this out here!

• The Barnes and Noble NOOK HD and the NOOK HD+ are available for purchase in the UK! The former has a 7-inch 1440 x 900 pixel display, a 1.3GHz dual-core processor, and is £159 for the 8GB version and £189 for the 16GB version. You can get this one in white or grey and both have an SD Card slot.
  
  The NOOK HD+ on the other hand is rocking a Full HD 9-inch display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and comes in a choice of 16 or 32 GB's of storage. The smaller option will set you back £229 and the 32GB one is £269.
  
  If you're after one then you can pick them up from any one of these stores; John Lewis, Argos, Asda, Dixons, Sainsbury, Waitrose, Blackwell’s or Foyles. Or if you'd rather you can metaphorically pick one up from Barnes and Noble's website!

• Samsung has added the iPad Mini to their lawsuits against Apple and the company has also been allowed access to the finer details of HTC and Apple's recent agreement!

• An official YouTube app is now available for the Wii U and it allows you to play videos on your TV, while your GamePad acts as the control and shows you all the details about what you're watching including the description, category, views, tags, and comments. Just in case you were worrying it's a free download and a very welcome addition!
  Via Slashgear.
  
  

And finally, it looks like a white Asus' Padfone 2 is on the way!

Via UnwiredView.

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