Samsung officially announce the Galaxy S4 Active!

   We've heard a lot about it and we already assumed it was part of the family from the mass of leaked images, but here it is in it's full glory, the officially announced Samsung Galaxy S4 Active. As we expected this is a ruggedised version of Galaxy S4, but there's some interesting trade offs in this variant of the phone.

   For example, much remains the same there's still a 1.9GHz quad-core processor, which we assume is the same Snapdragon 600 as in the original Galaxy S4, but there's also a few changes. The screen for example isn't the same 1080p amoled display, instead the Active is rocking a 1080p TFT LCD display, which could possibly be down to supply issues of the amoled variant. 

   One other thing which has been switched out is the 13MP camera from the S4, replaced in this case by an 8MP sensor which you can use to take pictures under water too! Samsung have chosen to offer an 'Aqua Mode' for the camera, which allows you to 'increase visual quality and clarity for enhanced underwater images and video' and it also lets you use the volume down key as a shutter button for the camera too!

   Because this is a rugged smartphone it has had to receive certification for the durability and this device has returned with an IP67 rating. This means that it's both dust and water resistant and it can tolerate being in up to 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes!

   The device will be rocking Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on launch and there will be 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and a 2600 mAh battery crammed into those rather good looking frames!

   All in all this is a nice device and if you want one then in the future they will pop up in 'urban grey', 'dive blue' and 'orange flare', the latter of which are to the right and the former is above. The S4 Active will go on sale in the US and Sweden initially and it will probably branch out after that. Keep your eyes on Samsung's June 20th event for some hands on action!

   The full press release is available here and check out the full spec sheet in the image below!

Click to enlarge.

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Lenovo looking to expand their smartphone brand to the US within a year!

   Lenovo are already a huge company inside China and Asia more generally and they seem to sell a fair few laptops in the UK too. Today though the news is about their smartphone division: an area which the guys are looking to grow in the coming years. A key part of that is expansion and according to the Wall Street Journal Lenovo's CEO, Yang Yuanqing, has said he wants his phones in the US within the year!

   Yang said that: "Smartphones are our new opportunity... [and] As a public company you always have to consider how to grow." The main issue which Lenovo will be facing is the stiff competition and the relatively small amount of brand awareness which the company has in the US. The company is well known in Asia and they're growing their presence in Europe, but the US is a different kettle of fish, as Nokia have been finding lately!

   The issue is, as Yang said, that the smartphone market "is more like the fashion industry," and Apple and Samsung are currently the 'in' brands and this is something which Yang hopes to overcome through marketing, something he wants to strengthen as the phones arrive.

   What do you think? Would you be interested in a Lenovo phone like the K900? Let us know in the comments below!
WSJ Via TheVerge.

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Huawei's super thin Ascend P6 pops up on EVLeaks!

   So the Huawei Ascend P6 was never much of a surprise: it's been leaked possibly more than any other phone in the past few weeks, but that doesn't mean we're still not excited to see what is in store for us. Today the guys at EVLeaks have again managed to get their hands on some press pictures of the new device and wow, this device looks stunning.

   As you can see from the picture embedded to the right, the phone has definitely got itself in shape for the summer and it looks to be unbelievably thing! We're not sure how thin it is, but it looks impressive alright. Rumours suggest it's 6.2mm thick, but it's impossible to say at the moment. That tiny chassis is meant to hold a 4.7 display, which is likely to be 720p if we know Huawei, as well as a 1.5GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM. At the moment there's no word on the battery, but we can expect it to be a small unit just to ensure that everything fitted in here. That tiny little camera sensor on the rear of the phone is said to be 5MP and you can see the flash on the rear of the phone too!

   The device is reported to have Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean on board and as you can see Huawei seem to have skinned that pretty heavily, but strangely enough there doesn't appear to be any navigation buttons. That might just be down to the way EVLeaks have applied a skin to the phone outline, or they might be hidden a little more subtly as capacitive buttons around that Huawei logo.

   And finally, Huawei's boss let it slip on Weibo that the phone will launch on June the 19th in London, but naturally that status has now been deleted! So what do you guys think? Is this going to be a great phone or is it just Huawei showing off a little? More importantly though, do you want one?

Via EVLeaks (1), (2), (3) and (4) and CNet.

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Is this the Galaxy S4 Active?

   We've been hearing a lot of rumours about a ruggedised version of the Galaxy S4 for a while now. Up until now though there haven't been any really substantive rumours, but if GSMArena are correct then this is the device which will be released!

   According to the picture to the right the phone remains the same as the original Galaxy S4 in the internal stakes! That means that there is a quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor clocked at 1.9GHz with the Adreno 320 GPU. The screen is the same as the original and that means that there's a 5" Full 1080p HD amoled display and from the specs sheet the only thing which doesn't remain the same is the the same size and resolution as the original Galaxy S4 - a 5.0-inch 1080p unit, though it's unclear if it's a Super AMOLED one or not. The 8MP rear camera is the only downgraded feature from the original Galaxy S4!
 
   As you can see the external appearance of the phone is a fair bit different with hardware button employed below the screen and on the rear there are two screws visible which make the device look more industrial and the phone is also more metallic.

   What do you think of this device? If this is the phone which is announced would you be interested? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Via GSMArena.

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The world's first water-cooled smartphone is with us!

   We already know that smartphones and water don't typically get along, unless their name is the Sony Xperia ZR. So where's the sense in putting water inside of a device? Well, if you've heard of NEC then you'll know that the company are quite pioneering and they've recently announced their new Medias X 06E which is the world's first 'water-cooled smartphone'.

   Yes, it does look to be tailored very much towards women, but that doesn't mean that the smartphone can't keep cool under the collar and that's why the smartphone has, "a water-filled heatpipe funnel[ing] heat away" from the quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor. Essentially this technique combines the water pipes with a graphite sheet which is facing the phone's motherboard, to keep
the phone a lot cooler when under strain than the other devices which don't have the tech in use! There's an interesting little diagram in Japanese which you can decipher to show you how the heat maps look with the tech working, embedded to the right.

   At the moment though it's hard to determine if there are any performance benefits to having a set-up like this, but according to NEC having the cooling in place it helps to keep the phone's processor running at full power for as long as necessary as it helps to keep the phone from overheating as quickly. In reality though it's unlikely that this will happen very often on the move because your battery will take a battering if you run it at that full power, so we doubt this is a very frequent occurrence or issue.

   If you're more in the phone than the water-cooling features then the Medias X is a very nice phone indeed. On the inside there's Android 4.2 Jelly Bean driving the phone, a 4.7-inch 720p OLED display, LTE and a 13.1-megapixel Exmor RS camera, which makes the whole phone seem like a very solid phone.

    This phone will be available in Japan under the super catchy title of the NEC Medias X N–06E and this phone will land on NTT Docomo at some point towards the end of June.
Via Engadget.

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Sony announce the Xperia ZR: Who said you can't use your phone for underwater photos?!

   Sony are starting to make more of a mark in the Android landscape lately. This is in part down to the huge array of phones that they're launching and it's partly because their phones are well made and they have these quite unique waterproof and dust-resistant features.

   Today the Japanese company are back with their latest effort and this time it's a new variant on their popular Android flagship and this one is called the Xperia ZR! The devices huge selling feature is that it is water proofed for up to depths of 1.5 metres and as you can see in the video embedded below this give you the option to take video and pictures underwater!

   Aside from the cool water resistance the phone will fall into what is this year's mid-range with a 4.6" 720p display which is enhanced with Sony's Reality Display technology which will be driven along by a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, which is quad-core and 2GB of RAM. The whole thing is running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and hopefully Sony can get updates out relatively soon, although we wouldn't hedge our bets on anything arriving until Q3 or Q4 this year at the earliest if Sony's track record is anything to go by.

   Obviously for those underwater shots you're going to want a good camera and that's why this phone has the same 13MP sensor which the flagship Xperia Z is rocking, which should be more than enough for the majority of people who don't have a dedicated camera which they carry with them and the front camera will be a VGA sensor, which isn't great, but it's good enough for video calls.

   Initially internal storage is a little short at only 8GB, but you can expand this with a MicroSD card up to 32GB in size and when it comes to the battery Sony have made us happy with a 2300 mAh unit being included which thankfully is removable so we can tax that LTE connection as much as we want and swap out the batteries on busy days!

   Sony have said that the Xperia ZR will come to "various global markets" in Q2, so it'll definitely be here by the end of June, but other than that there's no price, but you can plan whether you want it in black, white, pink or mint in the meantime!
Sony PRNewsWire Via TheVerge.

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Sony to offer a new high-end device powered by Firefox OS according to Mozilla exec!

   Firefox OS from the guys over at Mozilla has so far been confined to the budget devices and the most impressive device in terms of specifications and appearance goes tot he Geeksphone Peak in our opinion. The device itself only has a modest set of internals and it definitely doesn't compete with any of the new flagship devices from the Android manufacturers.

   According to rumours today the Firefox OS landscape may be set to change with Mozilla's Senior Vice President for Mobile Devices, Li Gong, who said:

"Sony is known for quality and user experience. So they are targeting for very very high (end). We are in joint discussions on the kind of device and what's the product." 

   The problem for Mozilla and their fledgling OS is that while it will be budget devices which help the platform gain market share, the devices don't really capture the hearts and minds of consumers and as Gong said:

 "The low-end entry point devices are good point to enter the market. But that doesn't mean we can't scale up or we don't want to scale. We do want to scale up... But an ecosystem takes some time to build."

   Mozilla were also keen to show how Android isn't quite as open as people like to think. Yes, companies are free to do as they please with it, but the development takes place behind closed walls and only after the latest version of Android is released are people free to make the changes they please to it. Firefox OS on the other hand, 'are the only company that takes a pure approach. We are entirely open. Not only open source, but open process. No price, no nothing.'

   Gong went on to say that:

"People like to see us because we are totally transparent. All the products, all the roadmaps, the delivery, feature sets, bugs, fixes, everything is open. Anybody can come in and see where it's headed."

   The only real issue for Firefox OS and Mozilla is the competition. There's Windows Phone from Microsoft, Ubuntu Touch from Canonical and there's Samsung's Tizen platform which we;ve yet to see land on the market yet. Mozilla need to make the most of the partnerships they have with carriers already and they need manufacturers and designers to do truly unique things which capture people's attentions and minds if they have any chance of competing with the current line up of mobile operating systems!
ComputerWorld via XperiaBlog.

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