Samsung I9103 Galaxy R review: Riding shotgun

Introduction

The Samsung I9103 Galaxy R rode in on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform and became the first affordable dual-core smartphone from the South Korean company. With a bright SC-LCD screen and brushed metal back, the Galaxy R is just different enough from the Galaxy S lineup to stand on its own.

   
Samsung I9103 Galaxy R official photos

Samsung has so many variations of their models that sometimes it's hard to say when one model stops and another begins. Take the Samsung I9103 Galaxy R, positioned somewhere between the Galaxy S II flagship droid and the mid-range Galaxy W.

Read More

Samsung Galaxy R vs. LG Optimus 2X: Affordable dual-cores

Introduction

Yep, you read that right. Affordable and dual core wouldn't normally belong in the same sentence. In 2011. And you don't need to press fast forward. Just sit back and enjoy. There's a lot stewing in the industry's pot and we think the place smells of quad core already.

So, two affordable dual-core Android smartphones it is. The Samsung Galaxy R and the LG Optimus 2X have been duly and thoroughly reviewed but we thought a head-to-head comparison wouldn't hurt - we've certainly been asked plenty of times which one is better.

Read More

Samsung and Corning embark on an OLED joint-venture

Yesterday Corning and Samsung announced that they would be teaming up to provide a product that plays to each of the companies strengths.

Samsung, who alongside their mobile devices are famed for a pretty reputable display manufacturing arm, have joined forces with Corning, best known for their super scratch an shatter resistant Gorilla Glass, which features on a vast number of smartphones and tablets currently on the market.

The two names are planning to develop and manufacture a new specialty glass substrate to accommodate the fast expanding OLED market, under the product name of 'Lotus Glass'.

Samsung already have some fine examples of OLED technology under their belt, including the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S II's Super AMOLED Plus and of course their range of OLED televisions too.

Read More

Samsung Galaxy S III and Apple iPhone 5 to be waterproof?

We've already heard about a hundred different rumors about the Galaxy S III specs sheet, but this one is by far one of the most exciting. According to an anonymous tipster, who is said to be working for a large UK retailer the next Samsung flagship will be waterproof. And it won't be the only high-end phone to have such a feature, either - the iPhone 5 will also reportedly resist water.

The rumor has it that the two top-shelf smartphones will feature a special nanocoating over their chips, which is impenetrable by water.

Read More

Galaxy S Advance poses for even more shots ahead of launch

Samsung announced the I9070 Galaxy S Advance just four days ago, but it already escaped in the wild twice to play in front of a camera. The previous live pictures we quire boring, while today's are much more interesting.

  
Samsung Galaxy S Advance

The Galaxy S Advance design is a mixture between the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Nexus. You can clearly see that from the shots below.

In case you've missed our previous coverage, the Galaxy S Advance is positioned between the first and second generation Galaxy S phones. It packs a 4" Super AMOLED WVGA display, a dual-core 1GHz processor and a 5 megapixel camera with HD video recording.

Read More

Nokia Lumia 800 is selling hot in cold Finland

The first Nokia Windows Phone - Lumia 800 - is selling really good in Nokia's home Finland. The phone was launched on February 1 there and is already out-of-stock in some retailers, while others expect to deplete their supplies in a few days.

The Finns are really dedicated to own the next big thing from their favorite local company. Whether the good sales are dues to some kind of national pride, good advertising or pure love for the company - it doesn’t matter. The Lumia 800 is selling great, so it should turn out positive in the end of this quarter for Nokia.

Read More

iOS apps crash more often than Android apps, study shows

In this episode of smartphone myth busters, we'll investigate the claim that Android apps are often released to the market unstable, whereas iOS apps are always bug-free and buttery smooth.

According to a study by Crittercism, quoted by Forbes, both platforms have their share of apps that crash and, if anything, the iOS ones do so more often. The company which specializes in providing real-time crash reports for mobile apps evaluated reports over a period of one month and found that iOS apps crash quite a lot more than their Android counterparts.

In the first of the three quartiles we got data for, iOS apps crashed after 0.51% of all launches, whereas Android apps only crashed in 0.15%. In the second quartile the picture is similar with iOS apps crashing in 1.47% of the cases, whereas Android apps did so 0.73% of the time. Things are much closer in the third quartile - 2.97% crashes for Android vs 3.66% for iOS.

Read More

HTC Sensation in Ice White, ICS for all Sensations [UPDATED]

A Dutch PR site broke the news that HTC will be releasing an Ice White color version of the HTC Sensation. To sweeten the deal, the phone will launch with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box. The whole Sensation line will be getting ICS too.

Update, March 3: It turns out that the Ice White Sensation won't be launching with Ice Cream Sandwich after all. It will launch with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and be updated with the rest of them. Also, some markets already have a white Sensation, so the big news is that the Sensation line is getting ICS.

Read More

Android in January: Gingerbread nears 60%, ICS gets 1%

The Google developers just published the updated charts, showing the version distribution of the platform in December. Gingebread keeps extending its lead at the top and now powers 58.6% of all droids - a 3.1 percent point increase compared to the previous month.

Froyo comes in a comfortable second, despite slipping 2.6 percent points to 27.8% share. At this point most of the phones that were meant to get Gingerbread updates have already gotten those, so the Froyo share will probably only be influenced by new sales and phones reaching the end of their lives from now on.

Read More

Samsung Galaxy S II to get a Plus version with 1.5GHz processor?

The announcement that the Samsung Galaxy S III won't be unveiled at the MWC wasn’t met with much enthusiasm but Samsung may have something else instead - Galaxy S II Plus.

A device identifying itself as "Galaxy S 2+" showed up in the online test results of benchmark An3DBenchXL. The benchmark results offer the following info about the device: OS version 2.3.4, screen resolution 480x800 and CPU clock 1.5GHz.

The regular Galaxy S II has a 1.2GHz dual-core processor - and so does the regular Galaxy Nexus. But clues to an alleged upgrade of the Galaxy Nexus with a 1.5GHz processor and a new GPU showed up a couple of days ago (again in benchmark results).

Quite a coincidence, but a Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket i727, for example, more or less matches the specs - 1.5GHz CPU, Android Gingerbread and WVGA screen (though we know nothing of its size).

Read More

Motorola DROID 4 rumored to launch on February 9

We have been hearing and seeing the Motorola DROID 4 since October, last year and every time we felt we were closer to launch it got delayed further. While most expected the phone to go on sale in December, that clearly did not happen. Instead the phone got a soft launch at CES, along with other Motorola phones but even then Motorola failed to mention a launch date.

Now there is a new rumor going around that suggests that the launch won't be long from now. Droid Lifehas heard from its sources that the phone will go on sale on Thursday, February 9, which is a week from now. As its predecessors, the phone will sell for $199 on a two-year contract.

Read More

HTC Ville shot on camera, ICS and more

The HTC Ville has popped up on video and is sporting the latest, and yet unofficial, version 4.0 of the Sense UI on top of Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich, and a confirmation on some very important specs.

The processor powering the Ville has been confirmed to be a dual-core 1.5 GHz with 1 gig of RAM, an 8 MP snapper, a 4.30incher of qHD (540 x 960) resolution HTC's trademark unibody design but the Ville looks sharper than the current crop of HTC high-end droids (Sensation, Rezound, etc.), making therumored 8 mm thickness very probable.The Sense UI version 4.0 offers some revamped screen and menu transitions and looks really smooth.

Read More

LG's first triple-SIM phone to be released next month

Looks like LG is trying to steal a piece of Nokia's pie, at least in Russia. As if two weren't enough, theLG A290 is set to feature three SIM cards.

   

While we've seen more (remember the quad-SIM back in October?), we're curious to see if the first triple-SIM from one of the top dogs will sell well enough to be released in other markets.

It's set to feature a 2.2-inch display @ 176x220 pixels, a 1.3-megapixel camera with flashlight, and a 1500 mAh battery. It all comes in at the fairly compact size of 113.5 x 51 x 12.95mm. Whether or not all three SIM cards will be active at the same time remains to be seen.

Read More

Carphone Warehouse UK to offer the Sony Xperia S for £430

Here is a surprise for the UK nationals. A few days ago we informed you about the ongoing pre-orders in the UK for Sony's latest and greatest Xperia S.

Clove and Play.com are currently offering the Xperia S pre-orders on £468 and £450 respectively, whileEbuyer holds the cheapest price tag of £430.

We just got a tip from a Carphone Warehouse employee that the retailer is going to offer the Xperia S on £430 as well.

Read More

Upcoming BlackBerry London image leaks again

BlackBerry London is a name we have heard several times before. We have even come across a purported image of the device before. Now we have yet another image of the upcoming smartphone based on RIM's new BlackBerry 10 platform.

The image, courtesy Crackberry.com, shows the device in black, and looks like a slide from a presentation. The front of the device looks similar to the last picture we saw of the phone but has some differences. For starters, it is completely black, but that could just be an alternate shade. What more important is that the beveled edges are missing, replaced by rounded corners and the large BlackBerry logo on the bottom is now a bit smaller and directly below the display.

Read More

HTC Sensation XE in India Soon

HTC Mobiles recently launched their latest smartphone HTC Sensation XE, the next version of the earlier launched HTC Sensation. Sensation XE comes with a Super LCD display, features 1.5 Ghz dual core processor, 8 MP Camera and Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. The price and launch date of HTC Sensation XE in India is yet to be announced.

Size and Design:

Sensation XE is not a small phone by any means. It is126.1mm long has a width of 65.4mmand not very slim but still pretty good having depth of 11.3 mm. It weighs 151g.

Display:

It features S-LCD capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors support having resolution of 540 x 960 pixels and  4.3 inches screen size. The pixel density is 256 ppi. It comes with HTC UI. It also features Multi-touch input method, Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate, Proximity sensor for auto turn-off and, Gyro sensor.

Read More

HTC Titan with Windows Mango Launched

HTC Mobiles have launched its two latest smartphones the HTC Titan and HTC Radar running on the Microsoft’s latest Operating system called the Mango. HTC is the second manufacturer to feature the Mango OS after Fujitsu Toshiba mobile communication.  At the launch event in London the official said that the smartphones will be available from next month in Asia and Europe. We have reviewed the important features of HTC Titan here. Let’s see what it has to offer to the Microsoft and HTC fans.

Size and Design:

HTC is renowned for its elegant designs and Titan design is no different even though it’s a giant smart phone. We have seen the previous HTC phones built with premium materials and Titan like the Desire and Sensation features moulded aluminium body. It has a huge screen and the phone is 131.5mm long 70.7mm wide and has a weight of16og. That’s quiet a size but even with such dimensions and weight it is only 9.9mm thick.

Read More