In Other News: 28/02/2013.

• HTC have confirmed that their brand new HTC Sense 5.0 will be coming to last year's range of phones! On one of their Facebook posts HTC said:

"HTC will be offering upgrades to some of its existing devices in the next few months, including global variants of HTC One X, One X+, One S and the HTC Butterfly. Also, note that some features enabled by the new HTC One hardware will not be available in the software updates." Facebook Via PhoneArena.

• The prices of the Nokia Lumia 520 and 720 have been released in the UK! The former will cost £169.99 and the latter will be £299.99 from SIM-free and Unlocked from Clove. For more details about the handset click here!

• OUYA have confirmed that devices will start shipping to Kickstarter backers from the 28th of March!
  Via Twitter.

• You might not know Sir Robin Jacob by name, but he was the judge who forced Apple to 'apologise' to Samsung via UK newspapers last year. Well it turns out that his accusation that Apple were lacking 'integrity' is somewhat ironic, because he has a new employer. His new place of work is Samsung! He's now going to be helping advise Samsung on other cases around the world. We know this won't have implications in the case, but it doesn't quite sit right in our mind!
  Via Engadget.

• Nokia probably won't be releasing a device with a physical keyboard at any point in the near future! In their interview with Slashgear they revealed that the main sticking point is on the size of the audience that this would attract! For more details head to Slashgear here.

• The Raspberry Pi is now a year old! Well the device went on sale on February the 29th so because we can't celebrate it until the next leap year today will have to suffice! Happy birthday guys!
  Via V3.

• For those of you who wonder about how valuable government secrets are there is a war of words amongst the world's governments at the moment and the latest to chime in is China's government who have revealed that two of their military websites, including that of the Defense Ministry, were hit with 144,000 attacks a month through last year! That works out to 394.5 attacks each and every day, or 16.4 attacks an hour! China attributed two-thirds of them to the US.
  Via Reuters.

• Samsung has told CNet that they are aiming to double their tablet sales this year! It's a loft but realistic goal given their relatively small presence in that market at the moment!
  Via CNet.

• Here's another leak from @EVLeaks, the tweet embedded below offers all the details you need to know!

Huawei Ascend Plus for Tracfone: 1.0GHz, 4" display, 4GB storage + microSD, 5MP, ICS twitter.com/evleaks/status…
— @evleaks (@evleaks) February 27, 2013

And finally, HTC have announced that they will be touring the UK to promote the brand new HTC One! It's an interesting concept and we're not sure if it will entail more than standing in a shopping sensor with a load of phones on display, but we'll wait and see! There's a full route plan embedded below!
Via Twitter.

Click to enlarge.

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24/12/2012: Huawei's Ascend Mate shown off in store, Raspberry Pi becomes a basestation and Google trying to ruin Christmas?

   As that special day approaches the news always tends to die down, but don't fear there's still a few things to report, it just won't be quite as much as normal!

Huawei's 6.1" phablet gets shown off again, this time in a retail store.

   Huawei's upcoming 6.1" phablet may be causing quite a stir because of its size, but since we caught wind of the device last week the phone hasn't been able to keep itself concealed. That may have something to do with Huawei's CEO, Richard Yu, whipping his phone out every where he goes!

   Over the weekennd Yu made an appearance at a Huawei retail store in Guangzhou, and he showed off the Ascend Mate to a relatively excited group of onlookers. We're still not entirely sure when this phone is meant to be released but judging by the amount of airtime it's receiving we would expect to see it arrive at CES in a couple of weeks.

   So far we don't know everything about the phone, but the phone is expected to by 9.9mm thick, have a 1.8Ghz quad-core processor and 2GBs of RAM, something which will become the standard next year. None of this is confirmed but the rumour mill is usually pretty spot on. You can see the full meet and greet below, but in the meantime what do you think about this device? Too big? Just about right? Let us know in the comments below!
Weibo Via TechnoBuffalo.

A Cambridge team makes the Raspberry Pi work as a cellular basestation!

   By now most of you will probably have heard of the humble Raspberry Pi, but for $25-30 you might be surprised to learn that this little piece of kit can, with a little bit of extra work, be turned into a private mobile network! Now what the guys at PA Consulting did wasn't entirely legal, which is why they secured their own signal-proof room, but they did successfully get two phones sending texts to each other through the Raspberry Pi.

   The team connected the Pi to a radio interface, they twinned this with Open Source software, which together gave them their mobile basestation! Frazer Bennett, one of PA's experts, said:

 "We've shrunk a 30ft basestation into a 3in Raspberry Pi and created our own mobile phone network. This proves what can be achieved through low cost off the shelf systems."

   If you're intrigued how they did it then check out the video below, but remember there is a legal minefield if you want to try this yourself!
Via NewElectronics. 

Is Google trying to ruin Christmas?

   And finally, is Google trying to ruin Christmas? We've seen them release their very own Santa trackerwhich shows Santa delivering presents at this very moment! (You can also get it as an Android app!) But, there's also been a slightly humorous post on Google's issue pages for Android as one user has dug up a 'Santa with a sad face', which we all know is totally unrealistic and unrepresentative of the man himself! You can see the bug report followed by the offending emoji embedded below! First Google cancelled December and now this, maybe Google planned for the world to end!
Via AndroidPolice.

Please describe the problem in detail. Be sure to include:
- Steps to reproduce the problem.
1. Enable Emoji keyboard.
2. Use Emoji keyboard to type the Santa icon.
- What happened.
A Santa with a sad face appears, ruining Christmas.
- What you think the correct behavior should be.
A Santa with a jolly smile should appear, representing his unending joy he derives from gift giving; a joy he wishes to communicate to Android users during the holidays.
Version: 4.2.1 (Via GoogleCode).

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20/09/2012

We've got a PadFone 2 on the way!!!!!

   Asus' original PadFone was one of the stand out devices from last year. Literally no one bought one but everyone thought it was a great idea! So excuse us for being quite excited about a souped-up successor!

   While we don't have any details about the device yet we've seen a lot of reported benchmark details about the phone. If these benchmarks turn out to be accurate then we'll be seeing a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, just like LG's upcoming Optimus G, topped with 2GB of RAM and Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich.

   Mark the date, October 16th, in your diaries because we're about to see another take on the future of phones!

In other news:

• HTC have under cut Apple and Samsung with their Windows Phone 8 flagships. Clove has the 8X up for preorder at £399.99 including tax ($648), while the 8S is listed at £224.99 including tax ($364). In contrast, UK sales of the iPhone 5 kick off at £529 ($856), again including tax, while you can pick up a Galaxy S III unlocked and SIM-free for £462 ($748).

• ZTE will be announcing a phone running Firefox OS in early 2013.

• iPhone 5 16GB costs $207 to produce according to IHS iSuppli.

• T-Mobile USA names John Legere as new CEO, says hello on YouTube.

• Raspberry Pi squeezes 50% performance boost with turbo mode.

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01/08/2012

Nexus 7 gets a good set of accessories.

   By now many of you hardcore techies will be rocking Google's latest and greatest, the Nexus 7. But, until now, there has been a distinct lack of accessories, something both Asus and Google has been keen to change.

   The UK retailer, MobileFun, has said the arrival of a host of extras is imminent and the options are looking good!

   There's the rotating case (right) which will set you back £27.95 ($44), while the non-rotating counterpart will be £22.95 ($36). The folio case will be £39.99 ($62) and the top of the range Bluetooth keyboard case will be £79.95 ($125). And an official screen protector will set you back £14.95 ($23). All in all, a great range of options for a great device!

In other news:

• Apple has been reported to be the world's biggest computer shipper again. But their numbers are somewhat skewed by the inclusion of iPad's in that category. But, a great achievement nonetheless.
• On the contrary analysts have predicted Microsoft's Surface tablets will sink when they arrive later in the year. Cost and lack of a 'wow factor' have been cited as the main reasons.
• The Samsung Galaxy Nexus has managed to avoid Apple's injunction in the USA and will stay on sale!
• The Japanese mobile tech giants have joined forces to take on Qualcomm and TI in developing wirelessly-enabled smartphone and tablet chipsets. The group involves Fujitsu, NTT DoCoMo, NEC and Fujitsu Semiconductor have created 'Access Network Technology Limited'. The new partnership promises "industry-leading communications platform products" and they aim to reduce the reliance on foreign-made wireless components.
• Raspberry Pi, the little device designed specifically for hacking, has received a port of Android Ice Cream Sandwich. This is great news for those planning to run a home sound system or something similar off of the device. As well as this ICS is a great foundation so we can expect Jelly Bean will be up and running in no time!
• 1 million people signed up to Microsoft's new Outlook.com email service in under 6 hours! It'll be interesting to see whether the number of constant users remains as high.
• HP has said OpenWebOS will not be coming to current devices because it needs a processor that supports Linux Kernel version 3.3. Fear not Pheonix and other WebOS groups are on the case!
• TAT founder abandons RIM well before BlackBerry 10 launches, deciding to opt for more start ups instead of sticking with RIM.

And finally, do you want to see the evidence Samsung was blocked from using in their current court case with Apple. Judge Koh blocked the company using it as evidence, so instead Sammy released the evidence to the press to show how they didn't copy the iPhone and how 'fundamental fairness' had been ignored in stopping this bit of evidence coming to court. We think the image speaks for itself even if both the Judge and Apple are annoyed now!

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16/07/2012

HTC reportedly cancelled the ICS update for the Desire HD.

   When we heard the lists of devices each manufacturer planned to put ICS onto there was one device in particular we did not expect to see on the list. That device was the ageing, but still relevant, HTC Desire HD. 

   Sadly we've recently learnt that Telus, a Canadian Network has cancelled the update for their version of the device and we have heard rumours that the same issues Telus faced will be exactly the same for all variants of the device.

   The handset has a Snapdragon S2 processor and 768mb of RAM so there's every chance this device could run ICS and probably will through alternative software sources, the obvious one being CyanogenMod.

   Surprisingly Telus cited “poor device performance during testing” as the main issue, but that sounds more than slightly suspect to us! Let us explain; the HTC One V, for example, features the exact same processor but only 512MB of RAM and still managed to ship with Ice Cream Sandwich. Even the little HTC Desire C, with it's little 600Mhz processor, is running Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, so we remain optimistic that international versions of the device will get some ICS but don't get your hopes up guys!

ZTE facing slight trouble?

   ZTE have been doing rather well lately; they've been rising up the selling ranks and they're aiming for a top 3 market share in the next few years. But, it seems the bubble might be starting to burst for the company.

   Shares in the company have fallen 17% after some warnings arrived suggesting that half-year profits could be heading down by a massive 80%. To add insult to injury there’s rumours that 12,000 staff are to be pushed out the door AND the FBI are investigating the sale of banned kit to Iran.

   ZTE have already announced they're showing off a new gaming handset on Wednesday, so this news really won't help the companies bid to grow in Europe and the US

In other news:

• Lenovo is coming close to overtaking HP as the world's largest PC manufacturer.
• British ISP's have said that their ban on The Pirate Bay has been largely ineffective after a brief initial success.
• Skype has admitted their is a leaking message bug for which they are working on a fix.
• Raspberry Pi is now available for general order!
• A 10" Kindle Fire has been tipped again to compete with the iPad.
• Fujifilm has sued Motorola over some camera technology in mobile phones. Apparently the pair have already tried to sit down before going to court!
• The New York Times doesn't deal in rumours, but they've reported that the iPad Mini is coming, this fall could be exciting!
• AT&T has halved the upfront cost of the Lumia 900 today, it'll now set you back $49.99 on a two-year contract.
• YouTube has started showing citizen filmed news! Is this the future?

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