First-time smartphone buyers chose Android over iOS in Q4

According to analytics firm NPD, Android managed to steal the top spot from iOS by a sizable amount following Q4 last year, making Google's mobile OS the more popular choice amongst newcomers to the smartphone market.

Between October and December 2011, US buyers deliberating over which device would take their smartphone virginity, opted for an Android-based phone rather than a member of the iPhone family.

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LG Miracle WP smartphone with NOVA display press shot leaks

LG is obviously about to complete the development of yet another WP smartphone. We just got a press photo of the handset, dubbed LG Miracle, and while it's not coming from an official source, such images normally only appear shortly before the device becomes official.

Along with the image we also got information about the key features of the LG Miracle's spec sheet. The most interesting bit is that the smartphone will be using a WVGA NOVA display, which will be a first for a Windows Phone handset. The super bright NOVA screen will help the Miracle stand out in the WP crowd, which is becoming an increasingly difficult task lately.

Unfortunately, the LG Miracle will feature a Snapdragon chipset with 1GHz Scorpion CPU, instead of the 1.4GHz and 1.5GHz units which we saw on most second generation WP smartphones. Its 5 megapixel camera will be able to capture 720p videos and there will be a VGA front-facing camera on board.

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White Nokia Lumia 900 surfaces, is cool as ice

After Nokia spilled the beans for the white version of the Lumia 800, the company accidentally leaked an image of a Nokia Lumia 900 sporting the same white polycarbonate unibody.

Looks great, doesn't it? The photo doesn't reveal anything we don't already know about the Lumia 900 - the exposed microUSB port, front-facing camera and non-curved glass. The best thing about the color versions of the Lumia phones is that their colors are not applied as a paint layer but rather run throughout the plastic.

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Nokia launches the white Lumia 800 this month

Nokia has just announced it is going to launch the white model of the Lumia 800 smartphone later this month in addition to its already available black, cyan and magenta editions.

The "beautiful, dazzling, glossy, snow-white" Lumia 800 will start selling later this month in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Finland, Poland and Switzerland. More countries will follow soon after.

   
White Nokia Lumia 800

According to Nokia, this is the same awesome white the N9 uses.

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Samsung Galaxy S III to be 7mm thin, rumors say

It seems that thinness is the new race to the moon for smartphone makers, and Samsung, not to be outdone by Motorola's RAZR XT910 7.1mm waistline, is reportedly aiming at the 7mm milestone with the new Galaxy S III. Surprisingly, Huawei is also in the race with the upcoming Ascend P1 S, which comes in at 6.7mm, and should see a global release in Q2 of this year.

Rumors continue that the S III thickness won't be uniform, and it will allegedly have the same camera 'hump' found on the S II. This new generation should also feature LTE support, although that's almost expected considering the growing list of Galaxy models already released with LTE.

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Is the Nokia N8's successor to be the last Symbian device ever?

Say 'bye bye to Symbian' is essentially the message coming from Nokia as it looks to bring about the end of its legacy platform sooner than many expected.

Despite talks of Symbian Carla and even Symbian Donna in the works for current and new devices alike, it now appears that the successor to the Nokia N8 might be the last new Symbian device we shall see from the Finns.

Nokia had originally promised continued support for Symbian following their plans to switch to Windows Phone as their primary OS last Mobile World Congress, with the intention of selling 150 million more Symbian devices before completely phasing the OS out.

It would seem their good intentions didn't inspire enough Symbian fans out there and as such last month Nokia admitted that sales of Symbian devices were falling faster than they had anticipated (no doubt due in part to the aggressive promotion of Nokia Windows Phones).

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Sony Ericsson announces Xperia active Billabong edition

Sony Ericsson and the extreme sports brand Billabong have entered into a partnership, which will bring the Xperia smartphones closer to the adrenaline junkies, who are fans of the popular Australian clothing and gear company. The first product of the partnership is the Sony Ericsson Xperia active Billabong edition.

There is no difference between the newcomer and the tough as nails, regular Xperia active, which we came to like quite a lot, save for the Billabong branded back cover and some software additions. The latter include exclusive Billabong screensavers, preloaded videos, and an app to keep you up to date on surfing news.

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Apple pulls iPhone 4, 3GS and iPad 2 from German online store

Apple has been forced to remove some of its 3G products from the German online stores. This includes the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4 and the 3G version of the iPad 2.

FOSS Patent's Florian Mueller says this is due to the injunction won in Manheimm by Motorola against Apple related to the FRAND patent. Coincidentally, Motorola won another permanent injunction against Apple related to iCloud in Germany on the same day but that is a completely different case and not related to these products being pulled from the stores.

The products are only being pulled from Apple's online store in Germany and the brick and mortar stores will still have them in stock. This is because Motorola only sued the German subsidiary of Apple, which is only in charge of handling the online side of the sales.

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