| MacUpdate Weekend Sale | :This weekend MacUpdate has slashed prices on Painter 12 and Painter Lite. Painter 12 retails for $429, but has been reduced by 54% to $199. Painter Lite has seen a 58% price cut from $69 to $29. Hurry, because these deals are only available until May 19th 2013. |
Samsung is expecting to hit the 10 million sales milestone for its flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, in the next week. If reached, Samsung co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun believes it would become the fastest selling smartphone in the company's history, beating its predecessor to the very same sales barrier by almost three weeks.
HTC is working on doubling the amount of HTC One devices it can produce, in order to meet what it calls "strong demand" from its customers. The company aims to manufacture twice as many of the flagship smartphone as it did last month, with a view to increasing it further as time goes on, after overcoming supply chain issues and a legal misunderstanding with Nokia over its microphones.
NEC has unveiled a smartphone aimed at women, which it claims to be the first in the world with a water or liquid-cooled processor. The Medias X 06E, forming part of NTT DoCoMo's summer release list, uses a tube of liquid that transfers heat from the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor to a graphite radiator located elsewhere on the phone, spreading generated heat across the phone instead of in a single place.
Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has revealed the lineup of mobile devices that it will start offering over the summer. Eleven models make the cut, including nine smartphones, one tablet, and one "Raku-Raku" simplified smartphone. Notable additions include a new Sony Xperia smartphone, the Aquos Phone Zeta, and the Aquos Pad tablet from Sharp.
Nokia has formally revealed the Lumia 925 at its London press event this morning. Previously rumored under the project name of Catwalk and leaked yesterday, the aluminum-clad smartphone with a "unique metal band design" is being promoted with its 8.7-megapixel PureView smart camera with IOS and Carl Zeiss optics and flash as its main focal point.
An image reported to be of the Lumia 925 has appeared online, just one day before Nokia's London-based press event. The leaked photograph comes at the same time as Nokia starts to tease a new smartphone via advertisements on British TV, seemingly showing a device that could possibly be the long-rumored Lumia 'Catwalk.'
The Samsung Galaxy S4 will be available in an extra shade of blue, according to a Japanese carrier's promotional material. The images from DoCoMo arrive at the same time as other photographs that claim to show the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, something which has been suggested as launching at some point this month.
Nokia has formally unveiled the Lumia 928, headed to Verizon as a network-exclusive. The smartphone, previously leaked through a billboard and an advertisement in Vanity Fair, has been revealed before its expected launch event in London on May 14th, with the phone manufacturer keen to continue promoting its 8.7-megapixel PureView camera with Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash with another test video.
A smartphone manufacturer in Thailand is making two mobile devices that use two high-resolution camera sensors, rather than one high and one low. Images published on Facebook by i-mobile show the IQ X and IQ XA, which boast an 18-megapixel rear camera and an 8-megapixel front-facing version, both of which have BSI sensors and autofocus.
In its latest report, industry research firm Canalys is reporting on what it calls "worldwide smart mobile device shipments" for the first quarter of the year -- a term that includes smartphones, notebooks and tablets. Of the 308.7 million devices that fall under one of those categories that shipping in Q1, around 60 percent were said to be Android devices, reflecting the platform's strength in smartphones -- the fastest-growing area of mobile electronics. Apple's iOS placed second again, despite a dominant presence in tablets.
Huawei will be putting its first Windows Phone 8 device on sale in the United States as a prepaid device in the near future. The Huawei Ascend W1, renamed the Huawei W1 for the US market, will be made available in Walmart stores and Walmart.com later this month, and retains the same specifications and feature set that Electronista saw at Mobile World Congress in February.
Nokia has updated its Asha range of devices with an entry-level touchscreen smartphone at a media event earlier today. The Asha 501, leaked yesterday, houses a three-inch 320x240 touchscreen in a case not too dissimilar from the Asha 210 QWERTY smartphone shown last month, along with a new mobile operating system.
A Nokia smartphone being revealed in New Delhi tomorrow has allegedly been uncovered in a leak earlier than the manufacturer intended. A photograph showing a stack of phones, claimed to be the Asha 501, with the range of device casings matching the "add some color" statement made on an official Nokia blog post for the event.
Details of a new mid-ranged smartphone from Sony has appeared online, complete with an alleged test of its 5-megapixel camera. The C1905 is said to be an Android Jelly Bean-based phone that will form part of the Xperia range, and will sit alongside the Xperia L in the company's product catalog, with the leak coming shortly after claimed specifications of the camera-oriented Xperia i1 Honami were reported.
BlackBerry could be preparing an alternative to its strong-selling Q10 to add to its BlackBerry OS 10-compatible range. Images and leaked specifications suggest that the phone maker is creating another QWERTY keyboard-based smartphone dubbed the R10, one that has appeared in both black and red-colored casings.
An advertisement on a billboard allegedly showing the rumored Nokia Lumia 928 has appeared online. The new image, if genuine, presents the smartphone as having "the best low-light smartphone camera," as well as showing that it is heading to Verizon Wireless, and hints that the device may be launched sometime in the near future
MediaTek has launched its new quad-core System-on-Chip aimed for use in smartphones designed for emerging markets. The MT6572 is claimed to be the first dual-core SoC in the world with integrated Wi-Fi, FM, GPS, and Bluetooth functionality, something that could help lower the production cost of budget-ranged smartphones further.
A new rumor has Sony set to ramp up the smartphone camera battle in the second half of 2013 with a smartphone featuring either a 16 or 20-megapixel sensor. The sensor is also said to be one of the largest to feature on a smartphone at 1/1.6-inches and will be an Exmor RS stacked sensor type paired with a Cybershot G glass lens. It is expected to appear on the sequel to the Xperia Z, which is reportedly codenamed ‘Honami.’
Sprint managed to sell 5 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year, making up 86-percent of its device sales, according to recently released financial results. While 1.5 million iPhones were sold in the period, 43-percent to new Sprint customers, this is a drop from the record 2.2 million iPhones sold during the fourth quarter last year.
In the Amsterdam District Court, Finnish phone maker Nokia has won a court injunction that will stop device manufacturer HTC from using microphone parts co-developed and manufactured by STMicroelectronics NV in the new HTC One smartphone. A statement released by Nokia notes that the components were invented by Nokia, with the intention of being used exclusively in Nokia devices.
Huawei has unveiled a new smartphone destined for the Chinese market. The A199, said to be a renamed version of the Ascend G710 that leaked late in February by evleaks, appears to bear a remarkable similarity to the leaked G700 in both looks and specification, using a five-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1280x720.
Google is working to manufacture a 32GB version of the Nexus 4 with LTE support, according to a rumor. The smartphone built with LG, will reportedly receive a boost in storage from the 8GB and 16GB models already available, along with the speedy 4G LTE connectivity seen in other flagship smartphones.
The HTC One has gone on sale in the United States today, launching on Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T at the same time. The three carriers are offering the flagship smartphone through their online stores, though in some cases, brick and mortar retail outlets are left waiting until next week to start selling the device.
HTC has unveiled a new model in its range of Desire devices, that will apparently be released in Taiwan in the coming months. The Desire L has a 4.3-inch Super LCD2 display with a resolution of 800x480, Beats audio processing, and a design that takes a lot of cues from phones like the Desire X and One S.
During Google's quarterly earnings conference call, CEO Larry Page addressed common problems with smartphones -- poor battery life, phone failure when exposed to water, and damage when dropped. Talking about these problems, the CEO suggested that Motorola Mobility's newest phone line currently in production would be close to unbreakable. "When you drop your phone, it shouldn't shatter," Page said.
Pantech has introduced another device in its range of Vega smartphones. The Vega Iron adds a minimalistic 2.4mm (0.1-inch) bezel to a five-inch 720p display, creating a mobile phone with a viewable area hitting 75.5-percent of the total area available on the front, something the manufacturer believes is the "world's best implementation."
LG is planning to create an updated version of the Optimus G smartphone, something that could launch by the third quarter of this year. The device will apparently have a screen that is closer to five inches in size, smaller than the 5.5-inches used by the Optimus G Pro, and is set to be a globally-released handset.
The BlackBerry Q10 has passed through FCC-mandated testing, ahead of a yet-to-be announced United States launch. The filings, made available earlier today, suggests that the first device with a keyboard running on BlackBerry 10 OS will be appearing on US carriers in the near future, alongside the touchscreen-based Z10 flagship.
Motorola is concentrating on making smartphones that forgoes the larger size trend in favor of improving quality, according to company design chief Jim Wicks. The first devices designed post-Google acquisition will apparently follow the doctrine of "better is better" instead of "bigger is better," as seen in other recent smartphone announcements.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 may hit retail stores in the US late next week, according to a leaked document from Staples. An in-store training sheet shows the smartphone reaching AT&T well before T-Mobile and Verizon, based on “tentative launch dates,” as well as details concerning Staple's handling of handset pre-orders.
ZTE has debuted its first Android smartphone using the Intel 32nm Atom processor platform at the Spring Intel Developer Forum in Beijing. The unfortunately-named ZTE Geek houses the Clover Trail+ processor running at 2GHz, housed inside a device that appears to be inspired by the company's Grand S LTE offering.
The HTC One will be available on T-Mobile on April 19th, according to the Best Buy website. The electronics retailer is carrying the smartphone at $249 when bought with a T-Mobile contract, or $700 off-contract, writes TmoNews. T-Mobile itself will also sell the HTC One without a service contract for $99, but it will still require monthly payments for the phone on its own, as per the new UnCarrier scheme the company is implementing.
The HTC First, the upcoming smartphone preloaded with Facebook Home, will give users the option of turning off the Facebook launcher. Those opting to remove the socially-focused user interface will be able to use a stock installation of Android, and effectively becomes the first phone from the manufacturer to run without an overlay, such as Sense, since the T-Mobile G2.
Pre-orders for the BlackBerry Q10 have opened up in the United Kingdom, after a relatively successful launch of the Z10 in the country. Both the Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U chains are taking orders for the keyboard-equipped BB10 smartphone, while the national carriers themselves appear not to have done so.
Android is losing market share to iOS in the US smartphone market, according to the most recent ComScore results. In a three-month period ending in February, Android went from 53.7 percent of the market to 51.7 percent, a drop of 2 percent, while iOS gained 3.9 percent from the 35-percent share in the previous 3 months, hitting 38.9 percent.
BlackBerry may be releasing another smartphone in the future, this time aimed at budget users, rather than the high-end Z10 and Q10 releases. An image, diagram, and some alleged specifications have surfaced for what appears to be titled the R-Series of device, which appears to be a form of successor to the Curve series of mobile phone.
Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California in San Francisco has entered an order on the recent battery of Apple and Samsung motions brought in regards to the first contentious smartphone patent trial. While there aren't any clear decisions on any legal matters, Judge Koh has left open the door for a full retrial on the 14 accused products that need, at the very least, a new damages declaration.
A new software leak appears to show that Facebook plans to heavily integrate the social network with its new smartphone, expected to launch on Thursday. A ROM reportedly usable by only Facebook employees and authorized users shows a Facebook-themed version of the mobile operating system, as well as gives more hints relating to the phone specifications.
Amazon is still working on a smartphone to go along with its Kindle Fire tablet line, according to a new rumor. The retailer will allegedly be eschewing the 4.3-inch screen that some state it will use in favor of a larger 4.7-inch display, and is looking to release the long-rumored device at some point in the second quarter.
Sony has opened up online pre-orders for the Xperia ZL to customers in the United States, ahead of a retail release. Available in a 4G version with a 3G-only option expected shortly, the Sony smartphone that Electronista tried out at CES in January can be ordered through Sony itself, with an estimated shipping date of the 8th of April.
MetroPCS has added to its roster of 4G LTE devices with a new smartphone from Huawei, following on from the $150 Activa 4G launched by the carrier last year. The Premia 4G has a 4-inch touchscreen display than its predecessor, with an 800x480-pixel resolution and Gorilla Glass protection, and is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz processor with 1GB of RAM.
The Pentagon has issued a memorandum on Tuesday which, in theory, will ultimately enable the Department of Defense's (DoD) smartphone users to quickly share classified and protected data -- using the latest commercial off the shelf (COTS) technologies. The "device agnostic" plan relayed by DoD officials is intended to make things easier for users and boost classified data security at the same time, but Electronista has learned that the implementation is likely to be anything but smooth.
Asus' PadFone has maintained a unique strategy in the mobile market, acknowledging that smartphones and tablets are now essentially powered by the same components. The PadFone infinity is the latest extension of the concept, pairing a high-end Android phone with a dock that converts the pair into a 10-inch tablet. We stopped by Asus' low-key meeting room at Mobile World Congress to see the Infinity in action.
Acer is one of a few companies that has partnered with Intel for smartphone hardware, despite the overwhelming popularity of ARM-based chips. We already took a close look at the company's Liquid E1 and Z1 handsets, which are aimed at the entry-level and midrange market, and today we tried out top of the Liquid lineup, the C1, which is powered by a Lexington Atom processor.
Yesterday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia announced the Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 smartphones, alongside the Nokia 105 and Nokia 301 mobiles aimed towards customers in developing countries. Electronista braced against the crowds to try out the new devices destined for mid-range and budget-based markets, and came away from the Nokia booth pleasantly surprised.
Acer was among several computer companies with a presence in Barcelona this week to promote their latest mobile electronics. The Liquid Z2 and Liquid E1 represent the Taiwanese company's push into the entry-level and midrange smartphone markets, respectively. We had a chance to try out both devices at Mobile World Congress, ahead of their official arrival later this month.
Shortly after being revealed in both Japan and South Korea, LG has brought its Optimus G Pro to Mobile World Congress, as part of its four-tier Optimus strategy. Electronista managed to spend some time with the Pro variant of the Optimus G, which includes a full HD IPS display measuring 5.5 inches, three quarters of an inch larger than its predecessor, the Optimus G.
HTC has launched its new flagship smartphone in dual events in London and New York, one with a number of Sense-based refinements. The HTC One, previously called the M7 in rumors, houses an optically bonded 4.7-inch Super LCD 3 display with a full 1080p resolution and 468ppi pixel density inside a machined aluminum unibody, with Gorilla Glass 2 protecting the display.
The rumored X Phone by Motorola, owned by Google, has been called a "game changer" that could top the smartphone market. Comments allegedly made by Hugh Bradlow, chief technology officer for Telstra, to other senior mobile staff suggests the smartphone is a "breakthrough" that can "put pressure on Samsung and Apple."
Nokia has announced a new addition to its line of Series 40 phones. The Asha 310 follows on from the Asha 308 and Asha 309 in being a budget-oriented smartphone, and is the first Asha handset to have Nokia's Easy Swap Dual SIM support, a feature which allows the user to assign unique profiles for up to five SIM cards.
