RIM to launch new PlayBook line next week

Canada's Research In Motion has chosen its home country to launch a PlayBook tablet with built-in support for cellular networks, a crucial feature missing from its poor-selling initial models.

The BlackBerry maker said on Thursday it would launch the new tablets in Canada next week and roll them out in coming months in the United States, Europe, South Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Smartphone maker HTC sees third-quarter revenue drop, only China to grow

Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp said on Friday it sees sales growing only in China this quarter while other regions decline, forecasting as much as a 23 percent fall overall in revenue, in a further sign of how tough its road to recovery will be.

The world's No.5 smartphone maker, once one of the industry's high flyers but badly hit by competition from Apple Inc and Samsung, sees third-quarter revenue at between T$70 billion and T$80 billion ($2.3 billion and $2.7 billion), compared with T$91 billion in the second quarter.

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Apple's Jobs was open to making a smaller iPad: executive

Steve Jobs was receptive to Apple Inc making a smaller tablet, a senior executive said in a 2011 email revealed on Friday, fanning speculation it plans to make a mini-iPad to take on cheaper gadgets from Google Inc and Amazon.

An Apple mini-version of the market-dominating 10-inch iPad could counter increasing inroads made by tablets such as the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7. But the company has never confirmed the intensifying talk of such a launch.

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HTC to shut down its office in South Korea

HTC will be shutting down its office in South Korea, reports The Next Web.

The reason for this is reportedly due to HTC's inability to compete with Korean companies like Samsung and even LG on their home ground, where sales of HTC devices are reportedly “sluggish”. Apple is the only other non-native company that has done well in this market.

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More photos of the alleged next generation iPhone emerge

Iш looks like we have caught a glimpse of the future today... Okay, at least the iPhone 5 part of the future. Here comes an alleged next generation iPhone in its full splendor. More photos of Apple's upcoming smartphone have emerged, revealing a fully assembled device, to go with shots of some of its components.

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Entry level Sony Xperia J leaks again ahead of announcement

The Xperia J leaked a few times before and we already know everything there is to know about it. This time though, the photos are a lot clearer and show three different flavors of the phone.

 
Sony Xperia J

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Here's why the HTC Desire HD won't get Android ICS

With last week's announcement that the highly revered HTC Desire HD won't receive an official update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich causing quite a stir, the Taiwanese company has posted the reasons for the decision in its blog. The biggest issue according to HTC, has been the risk of users losing their personal data during the update process.

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LG Nitro HD for AT&T will get Android 4.0 on July 31

LG Nitro HD owners have a good reason to smile these days, as the handset's Android Ice Cream Sandwich update is finally coming their way. Starting this coming Tuesday, July 31st, AT&T will begin seeding the long awaited release of the Google OS.

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Samsung full report for Q2 is out, sales and profit increase

Samsung's full report of its Q2 performance is out (there was a preliminary report earlier this month) and gives us a more detailed picture of how the tech giant did in the second quarter. Sales for the company as a whole reached $41.8 billion (up 21% year on year), operating profit was $5.9 billion (up 72% YoY) and net profit was $4.6 billion (a 48% increase YoY).

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2011 Xperias won't get Jelly Bean, no ICS for Optimus 2X and Black

Every time Google announces a new version of its Android mobile OS, every droid user out there starts asking - will my smartphone get it? Well, we have some bad news for Sony Ericsson phones regarding Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and worse still - LG cancelled the ICS update for two of its phones.

Sony (actually, Sony Ericsson at the time) made sure to announce early on that its 2011 Xperia lineup will be updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (even if the company wasn't so quick to actually deliver the updates). And now is has revealed that the Xperia arc S and Xperia mini pro won't be getting Jelly Bean.

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Apple's court filings reveal early iPhone designs

The legal battle between Apple and Samsung may have become tiring to some but you can't deny the juiciness of some of the secrets that have been uncovered through internal documents since the two started going at each other.

Case in point being the latest Apple's internal documents that have been filed by Samsung in court that show some of the early iPhone 3D design models before the first iPhone hit the market.

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Sony LT30p Mint previewed ahead of announcement

The upcoming Sony LT30p Mint from Sony did a few rounds a couple of weeks ago, when some camera samples leaked alongside a specs sheet that had flagship written all over it.

Today, it seems that Mobile-Review has not only gotten their hands on the Mint, but managed to snap so many pictures of the smartphone and its interface, that it's safe to say we've got a preview on our hands, and all of that before the device is even officially announced by Sony.

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HTC One X+ with 1.7GHz Tegra 3 might be headed to T-Mobile USA

So far, AT&T has been enjoying exclusivity of the HTC One X in the US (theirs is a renamed Krait-powered One XL), but now a rumor based on a leaked shot of T-Mobile's inventory shows that the carrier will be getting the "HTC One X+".

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Snapdragon S4 Pro benchmarked, crushes older chipsets

The lucky geeks at Engadget got their hands on a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro MDP (Mobile Developer Platform) and managed to run several benchmarks on it. The Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset in question is APQ8064 - with a quad-core Krait processor and Adreno 320 GPU. It should come as no surprise then that it managed to beat current chipsets quite easily.

Here are the benchmark results obtained:

	S4 Pro MDP (APQ8064)	Nexus 7 (Tegra 3)	Galaxy S III (Exynos 4412)	One X (Tegra 3)	Galaxy S III (AT&T, MSM8960)	One X (AT&T, MSM8960)
Quadrant	7,698	3,501	4,454	4,906	5,084	4,784
Vellamo	2,538	1,650	1,751	1,617	2,153	2,259
AnTuTu	13,826	8,995	11,960	11,030	6,713	6,956
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms)	1,227	1,785	1,460	1,773	1,926	1,453
GLBenchmark Egypt Offscreen (fps)	132	63	99	63	54	56
CF-Bench	18,219	11,807	13,110	13,233	9,439	9,479
SunSpider: lower scores are better

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Samsung Galaxy S III update does away with universal search

The latest 'stability' update for the international Samsung Galaxy S III no longer lets you search your local data (such as contacts and media files), due to legal pressure from Apple.

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LG posts net profit in Q2, but not from selling phones

LG handed in its report card for Q2 of this year. Overall the company did well, but the mobile phone division continues to struggle. The other divisions picked up the slack though and the company's profit increased compared to the same quarter last year.

The Mobile Communications division (which handles phones and network equipment) shipped 13.1 million phones, noting decreasing demand for featurephones and strong sales for LTE-enabled phones.

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Sony to hold a pre-IFA event on August 29 in Berlin

Sony just sent out invitations for a pre-IFA press conference. Anyone with an IFA press accreditation is invited to take a look at the latest Sony Xperia smartphones, which are expected to be announced there.

There will also be an exclusive booth unveiling after the press conference so members of the press will probably be able to spend some quality time with the new smartphones.

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