In Other News: 23/04/2013.

• Sony have decided to add the Xperia Z to their AOSP github. That means that they're busy at work for the Xperia Z which is good to hear, you can check out the video below showing where they've got to and head to the Sony developer blog here for full details!
  Via AndroidPolice.

• Microsoft is expanding the availability of their Surface tablets. From April 25th you can get one of the RT devices in Malaysia and at some point relatively soon after you will be able to get one in Mexico or Korea and then they'll arrive in Thailand in either May or June. The Surface Pro on the other hand will arrive in 19 more countries which are spread across Europe, Asia and Oceania for this time next month! One of those places in the UK!
  Via Engadget.

• Lenovo have confirmed that their K900 smartphone, the first to be powered by a dual-core Intel processor will be available on the 6th of May in China! We're not sure if this uber thin, 5.5" screened monster will head West, but we'll bring you more details if we have them after the big day!
  Via GSMInsider.

• Facebook have redesigned their mobile website to work better with the touchscreens which you'll be viewing it on! It looks a little bit like Google Now, but we'll forgive that if it is an improvement!
  Via AndroidCommunity.

• Geeksphone are the first company out of the block with a Firefox OS phone and you might have tried to get the Keon or Peak today, but you may well have been greeted with issues on the Geeksphone Store. It seems they had a bit more attention then they were expecting!

We are aware some of you have experienced issues due to the number of concurrent visitors... working on it! Sorry for the inconveniences
— Geeksphone (@geeksphone) April 23, 2013

• Bloomberg are reporting that Nokia will show off their much rumoured Lumia 928 for Verizon in May! We'll have to wait and see!
  Via TheVerge.

• BeagleBone are back with a new dev board. This is called the 'black' board and for $45 you can buy yourself a 1GHz SitaraT AM335x ARM CortexT-A8 processor from Texas Instruments, 512MB of RAM, 2GB of internal storage, Linux or Android compatibility, a micro-HDMI port, as well as USB and Ethernet ports! If you're interested head over here to get more details!
  Via Hothardware.

• Virgin Mobile are offering the Samsung Galaxy S4 on contract soon! The pricing will be a £99 up front charge for the phone with either a £36 ‘Starter’ package which give you 200 minutes, 500 texts and 500MB of data, or the £41 ‘Essential’ package which offers 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of data or you can go for the £44 ‘Premiere’ deal in which case you can have 2500 minutes and unlimited texts and data. If you want to reduce the upfront cost you can pay £2 per month extra and get the phone for £69 and don't forget if you're a Virgin broadband customer you get your £5 a month discount which makes these plans much more appealing!
  Via TrustedReviews.

And finally, Gamestick have unboxed the developer edition of their Kickstarter backed project. You can check out the video below if you're a backer because it shows you how the menus will look and how Riptide plays on the console!

Via AndroidCommunity.

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The Xperia Z joins the lockscreen bypass club as the Xperia Tablet S gets a software update schedule!

   It seems there's a lot of bedroom research going on at the moment as people find new vulnerabilities and ways to get past lockscreens! There's a complicated route which requires a little bit of luck on Samsung's Galaxy devices, Apple's iPhone has a few and now Sony's Xperia Z is the latest to join the prestigious club! 

   The video below outlines the way to bypass the lockscreen, but all you really need is a little knowledge of the test codes for the Xperia Z and well a screen locked Xperia Z! Sony may well have just fixed the Random death issues on the phone, but we expect there will be a patch for this in no time! If you're interested in seeing the exploit in action check out the video at the bottom of this post.

   On a slightly unrelated note, Sony have finally revealed their plans to update the Xperia Tablet S to Android Jelly Bean! The exact statement is no longer available, but it seems that the Xperia blog managed to grab the wording just before. The statement read:

"We will be releasing Jelly Bean for the Xperia Tablet end of April 2013 / early May 2013 for the Xperia Tablet. This update will resolve a memory management issue that may cause the Xperia Tablet to shut down from time to time.
Currently we do not have a roadmap to release the Jelly Bean update for the 1st Generation Tablet (Sony Tablet S)."

   That's great news for Xperia Tablet S owners, but not so good for owners of the OG Tablet S like us. To be fair to Sony they have been very good with their updates to the OG Tablet S and so we can't have to many issues if it doesn't go beyond Android 4.0.3!
Via GSMArena and XperiaBlog.

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Got your heart set on a Sony Xperia Z? Here's where you can get them!

   Sony's brand new flagship smartphone, the Xperia Z, officially went on sale in the UK today. There's a fair few places that you can pick it up from at the moment and we'll have a look at the best deals a little further on, but just before that here's a brief refresh of what's inside the device!

   The whole show will be kept on the road by a 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor which is paired with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, as well as a 13-megapixel rear and a 2.2MP front-camera arrangement. The stars of the show are the 5-inch 1080p TFT display, as well as the IP5 and IP7 dust and water resistant certifications and all of this is crammed into a shell which is 7.9mm thick! On the software front you'll be dealing with Sony's skinned version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which will be updated to 4.2 at some point in the future!

   So how much would a package like that cost you? Well here is a broad round up of where you can get it from in the UK and how much it will cost you!

SIM free/ Unlocked- Handset Only.

Handtec: £497.99. 

Handtec have both the white and black versions available at the moment!

Amazon: £499 (Black) or £524.99 (White).

Amazon are offering the phone too, although the white version is more expensive. This seems to be the case for most phones on the site, we're not sure why, but either way you can get the black one here and the white one here!

Clove: £522.

Clove might be slightly expensive, but they throw in a free NFC speaker for you to pair with your shiny new phone. You can get both colour variants here! Full information on the speaker that's included can be found on Sony's website here.

Expansys: £529.99.

Just like Clove, Expansys will throw in that NFC speaker and they have a choice of black or white phones too!

On Contract.

Like always on contract there is an abundance of options with every network under the sun, we'll link to all of the main places you can pick them up, but there's a few deals which immediately stood out to us!

Phones4U: Black and White.

Contracts with Phones4U seem reasonable, the cheapest monthly cost which gets you the phone for free is £36, which will get you 900 minutes, Unlimited texts and 1GB of data. If you're prepared to pay an upfront contribution of £209.99 for the phone you can secure the phone for £20.50 that will 100 minutes, Unlimited texts and a 500MB Data Allowance.

Carphone Warehouse: 

Three UK: Black and White.

Three offer the cheapest option for those of you who demand unlimited internet! You can snag the phone for £69 on a £34 a month contract in both colours!

O2 UK: Black and Purple.

O2 are interesting in that they're offering the phone at almost any price point on contract. You can pay anything up to £549.99 for the phone on top of a minimum monthly contract price of £11 a month! There's literally something for everyone, but remember to get higher amounts of internet you'll be paying through the roof!

Vodafone UK: Black and White.

Vodafone are currently only offering four price plans with the phone. The cheapest will cost you £29 a month and £149 for the phone and you will have the pleasure of using 300 minutes, unlimited texts and 250MB of data!

Tesco Phone shop: Black.

Tesco are offering lots of contracts, but they were keen to promote two of them, both of which will be O2 contracts. The first offers 600 minutes, Unlimited texts and 750MB of data for £32 per month and the second bumps that up to Unlimited minutes and texts and 1GB of data for £36 per month, the phone is free on both deals.

The reason these are promoted is that they are interesting for Tesco Clubcard holders as they will earn and extra 2500 Clubcard points when they buy from Tesco on those contracts.

Mobiles.co.uk: Black and White.

EE, Orange and T-Mobile haven't posted up any availability details yet, but if they do we will update the post!

   If you've made it this far then well done! To round the post off we've embedded a YouTube video from the Tesco Phoneshop which shows off the Xperia Z in all its glory!

If there is anyone we have missed off the list please email it to us and we will add it to the post! Use our contact form here!

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In Other News: 11/02/2013.

• Huawei have been making a bit of a splash (sorry!) with their smartphones of late. With a combination of solid design, good build quality and reasonable price tags their phones are getting the attention they deserve. With that in mind the upcoming Ascend P2, pictured above, has been caught showing off the waterproof certification which it is set to receive! As well as being waterproof we expect the device to offer a 4.7-inch 1080p display, a quad-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz. The rumour mill currently believes that we'll see 2GB of RAM, 8 and 16GB options, a 3000 mAh battery and 13 megapixel rear shooter. Hopefully MWC can reveal some more!
  Via AndroidCommunity.

• That $24.4 billion deal to make Dell private again may well have hit a snag. Southeastern Asset Management disagree with the agreed buying price of $13.65 per share, instead they feel that something more like $24 per share would make them happy! We're not sure how this will turn out, but things could get nasty!
  Via Hothardware.

• Minecraft and the Raspberry Pi, what do they have in common? Arguably not that much, but that doesn't matter because one can run the other. That's exactly what we're seeing here: you can now get your Minecraft fix on your Raspberry Pi! Check here for full details!

• O2 UK have launched a new service called O2 Tracks! The service offer you unlimited streaming access to the UK Top 40 singles chart. That privilege will cost you £1 a week if you’re an O2 customer, if not then you can have it for £5 a month, which isn't too much more expensive really! Check out the O2 Tracks site here for more and to download the app for Android and iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry versions are in the works!
  Via Eurodroid.

• Apparently UK retailer, Debenhams and more specifically their free WiFi service have been a huge hit! The service launched in June last year with O2's help and since then husbands and boyfriends have spent an average of 30 minutes browsing on their mobiles while their other halves hunt around the aisles! The top five most popular websites on the service are, in descending order: Facebook, Sky Sports, LiveScore, BBC Sport and YouTube!
  Via Mobile-ent.biz.

• LG has hired ex-Samsung employee, Carolyn Anderson, as the new head of mobile communications marketing. She was 'head of channel marketing and partnerships' at Samsung and is again re-united with Andrew Coughlin, who is LG's head of mobile communications! Hopefully the pair can bring some of Samsung's recent success to the company too!
  Via MobileToday.

• As one comes in another goes out, this time Dr. Lee Jeung-Jil has left LG display to head to Cupertino and Apple. The man himself is an expert in OLED technology, so we can expect him to help Apple as they work to bring OLED screens to their mobile and possibly even their computing devices.
  Via Slashgear.

   And finally, what could possibly be a better way to wrap up today's news than with a short video of Sony's new Xperia Z taking 999 pictures in 68 seconds! We're not going to lie, this is quite impressive, but it would be interesting to see how long other phones take to do the same thing?

Via GSMArena.

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A first glimpse of the Sony Xperia Z!

   We're just about to shut the doors and batten down the hatches for the night here at TheTechFront, but just before we do there's just about enough time to give you a quick look at Sony's brand new Xperia Z! 

   The device has been spotted on the CES showroom floor a little before it was meant to have been, but nonetheless here it is! We've heard a lot about the 'Yuga' or Xperia Z, but unfortunately we don't have any more news on what the internals are just yet! From the look of this picture that 5" 1080p screen is very believable! Sony has promised us that:

"In just three days we will introduce something extraordinary to the world and we can't wait to show you what it can do. Stay tuned for more..." Via XperiaBlog.

 So naturally we'll have some more details in the coming days as Sony kick off their announcements, which judging by a tweet from them, are also rather extensive!

Want to see how much kit is going to Las Vegas for #SonyCES? bit.ly/VIaVdu
— Sony UK (@SonyUK) January 6, 2013

Via Engadget.

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18/07/2012

ZTE announce the Grand X; perhaps not the 'most advanced gaming handset'.

   Zte have just announced what they previously claimed to be the world's most advanced game smartphone. We're not entirely convinced it's exactly that but it is a very appealing little device.

   On board there's Android 4.0.4 so it's a solid build of Ice Cream Sandwich, but the real news here is that it's completely vanilla Android!!!! Thank you ZTE!

   Under the hood things are very mid-range; there's a Dual Core Tegra 2 chipset, a 4.3″ qHD (960×540) screen, 5 Megapixel camera and a 0.3 megapixel front-facing camera. We have already seen this device a couple of months ago at Mobile World Congress. But back then it was known as the Mimosa X. 

   ZTE have also been touting HD Voice and HD video capture, along with Dolby sound and the usual set of sensors and connectivity options. Initially you'll have 4GB of storage but thankfully there's a microSD card for all your baggage.

   The device will be available at the start of August for £190 on pay as you go from both Virgin and Phones4U.

In other news:

• Windows Phone somehow has managed to steal 4% of the US smartphone market, which is surprisingly positive return from Microsoft's dead OS.
• O2 are apologising to their customers for the outage we reported recently. For affected customers they're giving you 10% off your bill and for every customer on O2 they have a £10 voucher to spend in store!
• Sony have announced a little Walkman powered by Android, we recommend considering the Galaxy Player before you look at the Sony device.
• Continuing the Sony news; there have been reports the company is preparing to release the Xperia Z. The device is meant to be top of the range in every respect! We'll let you know when we hear more!
• The Huawei G300 has now got some ICS!
• Jolla and their Meego projects have announced that they plan to lock down the Kernel and prevent custom ROMS on their device when it hits to market. That's a shame as that'll probably put an end to quite a lot of interest, especially from developers.

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