Philips launches W920 Android smartphone, packs a 4.3-inch display and a 5 megapixel camera

Philips has not had much of a success in the mobile phone segment. Many people don’t even know that they exist in this segment and you can’t really blame them for that. Philips mobile phones so far have been mediocre at best and if you see one you wouldn’t even remember its name in T-minus 1 minute.

Now, however, they have launched a new Android smartphone that is likely to stay in your memory for a bit longer. Say hello to the Philips W920.

So what’s so great about it? Well, nothing much to be honest but it does have a 4.3-inch TFT 800 x 480 display, 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash, 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Android 2.2 Froyo with Adobe Flash support. There was no information available regarding the processor specifications but the phone does have 512MB of RAM. Hopefully, there will be at least a 1GHz processor ticking underneath that gold and black body.

No mention about the price of the device but if I had to guess I would say it would be around $300 unlocked.

Rotten Core: Nokia lose huge market share in their homeland

There's a state of unease within Nokia at the moment and unsurprisingly so. With the first Nokia-Microsoft lovechild now out in the market (the Lumia 800, you might have heard of it) and an aggressive marketing strategy in place to drum up interest in Windows Phone-laden Nokia's coming fresh out of the factory, the Finnish company have been waiting with bated breath to see how consumers will receive this new-era Nokia.

They've shown a resilience to the tough times they've faced already and since the partnership announcement in February, many wondered just how this shift would affect the company's image. By bringing Microsoft in, they've inherently changed the way they operate and the way fans of the brand expect them to operate. Sure they brought the Asha lineup to maintain support for their Symbian products and the N9 is taking point in markets where the Lumia 800 isn't, but now Windows Phone is Nokia and as Stephen Elop so boldly said at Nokia World, the Lumia 800 is "the first real Windows Phone device."

Not only could a statement like that upset the likes of HTC, LG and Samsung, all of whom license Windows Phone from Microsoft, but the hardcore fans of what we could call the 'old' Nokia also might not welcome the change, and that is a notion that has the potential to hold water in this case.

The Finns have been proud of the globally recognized giant that is Nokia and it's probably one of the key things those from outside of the country associate with it, but a recent report from Helsinki's Taloussanomat shows that pride only takes support so far. In the last 12 months, Nokia have lost 45% of the market share taking their dominance from 76% right down to 31%.

Of course they still have the top spot, but the gap has dramatically narrowed, with the majority of their sales now in the possession of Samsung who have risen sharply from a mere 3% to 25% in the same amount of time. Apple then take third place with 16% in Q3 2011, with Sony Ericsson and Huawei sharing 11% each, leaving the remaining 6% of the market currently to ZTE.

This doesn't automatically spell the end for Nokia of course, far from it, but it still must be unnerving for them. The financial quarter in question actually precedes the announcement of the Lumia and Asha handsets, but as such, it does indicate that the change was necessary. It makes more sense for Nokia to have changed tack altogether, than continue along the road they were currently on and let's not forget the Finnish market is important for Nokia, but relatively speaking, it's a small one, with Finland's entire population around the 5 million mark.

Once the holiday season and the final financial quarter conclude we should get at least an initial indication of the impact the Lumia 800 is making. Until then however it's a case of crossing fingers and seeing if Nokia are able to reassure the old fans, as well as attracting new ones.

What would you say Nokia should do to maximize their potential in 2012, ideas in the comments. 

Lenovo LePhone K2 & S760 Android smartphones unveiled

Yesterday, Lenovo announced five new droid devices, but the only smartphone among them was hardly inspiring. Now though, the Chinese company unveiled two more LePhone droids, the S760 and the K2, and things are starting to get somewhat more exciting.

The Lenovo LePhone S760 is a relatively compact device featuring a 3.7" AMOLED screen, a 5MP main camera and a 1.3MP front-facing snapper. The RAM on this one is 512MB and there's a single-core Scorpion CPU to do the math.

The Lenovo LePhone K2, on the other hand, is a real beast, coming with a powerful dual-core 1.5GHz Scorpion CPU, mounted on a Qualcomm MSM8260 chipset and sporting 1GB of RAM. The Android 2.3.5 Gingebread smartphone is built around a 4.3" IPS LCD that should offer great viewing angles. The K2 also features an 8 megapixel camera and 1080p video recording.

There's no saying on when either of the phones will start shipping or how much it will cost, but we hope we'll get updated on that soon enough.

Motorola MT917 for China Mobile - 720p display, 13 MP, Kevlar, more

Motorola has announced the MT917 Android smartphone, which will be an TD-SCDMA exclusive for China Mobile. The phone's highlights are a 1280 x 720 4.5-incher (~330 ppi), a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, 1 gig of RAM, 13 MP camera (capable of 1080p video capture) on the back, and speaking of which, the back is made of Kevlar just like on the RAZR.

The phone is due to launch mid-December on China Mobile's network and there's no word on global availability just yet.

The phone is among the slimmest around with a 8.5 mm profile (not quite as slim as the RAZR, though) and will offer a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass display, Kevlar fiber back, zinc frame and splash resistant coating on the inside and out. It will come with Android 2.3 Gingerbread but hopefully will offer ICS some time post-launch.

We'll be eagerly awaiting a global GSM variant of the MT917, that will enter the elite among 720p-bearing phones and, hopefully, have a non-cyborg name to go along with it too.

LG announces Android 4.0 ICS upgrade plans

LG might be slow on the actual upgrades, but at least it’ on time with the announcements. While most of the latest Optimus siblings are getting their first Gingerbread bite just now, LG announces they are all going to taste Ice Cream Sandwich too.

The lucky devices are LG Optimus 3D, Optimus 2X, Optimus Black and Optimus LTE. The upgrade roadmap will be announced in December on the official LG Facebook page.

LG also promises it is exploring its options for bringing the Android 4.0 to some older Optimus smartphones too. So there is a tiny chance the Optimus One and Optimus Chic might get some Ice Cream Sandwich treatment as well.

Samsung GT-S7500 leaks in live pictures, is Galaxy S mini version

Here we go again with yet another mid-range phone from Samsung. This time it's the GT-S7500 which has leaked in two live photos showing us how the droid will look like.

And from what we are seeing it's not that much different from the other phones in Samsung's mid-range line-up. Although the photos aren't as detailed as we'd like them to be, it's clearly visible that the phone is like a pigmy Galaxy S with the shiny plastic outline and Samsung's usual big home button with two capacitive ones on each of its sides.

Keeping true to it's purpose of being somewhat an affordable device, it is highly likely to run Android 2.3 Gingerbread. And with that come a bunch of features like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, microSD slot (we hope) and more. Rumors are this fella will sport a 5MP camera with LED flash on the back.

Other key features such as display and resolution, battery and measurements are still unknown, but we bet this phone won't stay in the shadows for long. Stay tuned.

Nokia promises two battery-related updates for the Lumia 800 in the next two months

Ever since the Nokia Lumia 800 went on sale, there were sporadic reports that the smartphone battery life is less than stellar. Nokia obviously did some investigation on the matter and they found that the poor battery life wasn’t caused by software glitches, but rather by the user behavior.

So the Finns will be releasing a couple of updates over the next couple of months, which should improve the battery performance as a whole. The first update will come in December and will focus on the power efficiency of the device, while the second will come in January 2012 and will tweak the charging of the 1450 mAh battery.

According to Nokia, both of those are planned updates and will be made available through Zune. Given that software updates normally take much longer than a few weeks to prepare we are inclined to believe that.

Nokia Lumia 800 sales going way better than previously reported

The other day we told you about the Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette prediction that Nokia WP devices will have a dismal quarter and will hardly sell the targeted quarter million units. Now we've got some sites closer to Nokia saying that the report was basically full of it and the demand for the Lumia 800 is quite high.

And here come some facts to back up those claims. The Nokia Lumia 800 is the second most-popular smartphone in the Vodafone UK website, just behind the black iPhone 4S. What's more the cyan version of the WP smartphone comes in third and that one is still on pre-order.

The online store of the Netherlands carrier KPN tells a similar story, with the Nokia Lumia 800 the second best-selling smartphone there. Some other Dutch stores also list the Lumia 800 as sold out, though we are not sure if that's due to high interest or low supply.

We also got word that many Orange stores in UK are out of Nokia Lumia 800 units to sell.

We'll only know for sure when the Q4 numbers came in, but for now it seems there's more truth to the Nokia reports that they are having the best first week of sales so far, than to that Pacific Crest analysis.

Adobe Flash player doesn't work on Android 4.0, update on the way

You might have heard that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the bringer of Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), doesn’t support Flash. It's not a hardware issue limited to the that model, the problem lies with the software - Flash doesn’t support ICS. Yet.

Adobe is expected to release an update by the end of the year that will add support for Ice Cream Sandwich to Android's Flash player. But pay attention at how Adobe worded its statement:
Adobe will release one more version of the Flash Player for mobile browsing, which will provide support for Android 4.0, and one more release of the Flash Linux Porting Kit - both expected to be released before the end of this year.

So, the next major Android version isn't getting official Flash support. Which coincides with Adobe's updated strategy for mobile devices that calls for HTML5 to replace Flash.

That doesn’t exclude the possibility of Flash on Android altogether - we've seen third party players like HTC's plugin - but the end is nigh. RIM for one has officially stated that they will continue development of the plug-in for their PlayBook tablet (and presumably phones running the upcoming new OS). Others who have licensed the source code can do the same.

Note that this is only for the Flash plug-in for browsers. Devs will still be able to use Adobe's technologies to create apps and games for mobile devices through Adobe AIR. That will go on with a focus on console-like gaming (thanks to the recently added 3D support). Flash for the desktop will also see continued development.

Nokia Lumia, Apple iPhone 4S and Motorola RAZR arrive in India

Smartphone enthusiasts in India are in for one hell of a time, as three of the most anticipated smartphone from the top three platforms have landed on the shores of the sub-continent.

First up is the Nokia Lumia series, which was launched in India today with a grand event. Considering the fact that India is a key market for Nokia and that the phones went up on their India website shortly after the event in London, it's no surprise that the Lumia phones arrived in India so soon.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is priced at 29,000 INR ($577) and the Lumia 710 is priced at 19,000 INR ($378). With that price the Nokia 800 will become the most expensive Windows Phone 7 smartphone in the country and will be competing with Android smartphones such as the Galaxy S II and HTC Sensation, which are priced similarly. The Lumia 701, on the other hand, will compete against the recently launched Samsung Omnia W and the HTC Radar.

The Apple iPhone 4S will also shortly be making an appearance in India. Although Apple hasn't officially announced it yet, Indian mobile phone carrier Aircel has announced on their website that they will be launching the phone on November 25 and that the phone will be available for pre-order starting November 18. There are also rumors that Airtel will be joining Aircel in selling the 4S. Currently, the same two carriers are selling the locked version of iPhone 4 in India. No information regarding the price is available at the moment.

Lastly, we have the Motorola RAZR XT910 that was slated for launch in India sometime by the end of the year but surprised everyone when it suddenly appeared in stock on an online retailer's website. The phone is currently priced at 33,990 ($676), which is a fair bit more than the Galaxy S II that currently costs about Rs. 28,500 INR (567) from the same retailer and closer to that of the Galaxy Note, which was recently launched in India for 34,990 INR ($696).

With the launch of these new phones and with the Galaxy Nexus launching shortly, smartphone buyers in India are going to have a hard time deciding which device to spend their money on.

Nokia Maps for WP7 hacked to work on all WP7 phones

“Exclusive” is really a word that the XDA community really can’t stand. That’s why it’s no surprise that the Nokia-developed Maps application that was supposed to bring extra value to the WP smartphones of the Finns is already freed and made available to anyone with an unlocked (as in dev-unlocked not as in SIM-free) WP device.

Some helpful members of the hacking community got their hands on the Nokia Maps XAP file and they were kind enough to share it with everyone. The XAP file is all that you need to install Nokia Maps on your non-Nokia WP smartphone, so the app exclusivity seal is really broken.

Of course, Nokia said that their Maps app will eventually be making its way to other WP devices, but they probably didn’t expect it to happen before the Lumia duo is even out. Plus, the other key Nokia app, the Nokia Drive voice-guided navigation software, also got hacked out of its Lumia safety a few days ago, so the Finns might not be enjoying as much market comfort as they hoped when the Lumia 800 launches.

If you are interested in getting the Nokia Maps and testing it on your WP smartphone follow the source link to obtain the XAP file.

Unlocked Nokia 800 Lumia delayed to 2012?

The Nokia 800 Lumia is hitting the UK shelves next week, but we have some bad news to those of you that aren't into signing long-term deals. We just heard that the SIM-free version of the WP smartphone might be delayed until January 2012.

The reports are coming from Clove UK and there's no official confirmation yet, so take them with a pinch of salt for now. Still, the online retail has a good record with those things.

It's yet unclear if the delay applies to the UK only or if it will be a global thing. We guess it won't be too dramatic in the UK, where all major carrier will be offering the Nokia Lumia 800 anyway, but it might turn out to be quite a big issue elsewhere.

Also there's no confirmation of the fate of the other Nokia WP smartphone - the Lumia 710. That one should become available this month as well, but we are yet to see if it will only be sold on a contract.

Samsung launches a pink Galaxy S II in South Korea

If you've wanted to surprise your geeky girlfriend with a Galaxy S II, you were limited to only black or white colors, which are not exactly girly enough. Apparently, Samsung has felt your pain and they've launched a pink Galaxy S II.

The new pink color will not only attract the gals, but will also allow Samsung to sell more units of their Android flagship. Currently, Sammy has sold more than 4 million units in South Korea, 850,000 of which are in white.

Just in time for the holidays, the pink Galaxy S II will be available in South Korea at first, but might as well hit other markets. And why shouldn't it? It looks as girly as a pink pony and lasses will be all over it.

Nokia Lumia 800 to hit the UK on November 16

The first Nokia Luma 800 shipments were leaving the factories last week, but it's only now that we learn the actual date of its arrival. The Finns announced that UK residents will get the chance to buy the Lumia 800 on November 16.

Previously, the company set the price of the Lumia 800 at €420, which should translate to about £430 after the UK taxes are added. It may seem pricey, but you shouldn’t forget that this fella comes with free lifetime voice-guided navigation, a gorgeous AMOLED screen and that oh-so-sleek non-colored plastic unibody.

You are welcome to check out Nokia World 2011 live coverage for live photos, camera samples and benchmarks of the Nokia 800 Lumia. After that, feel free to drop us a line in the comments section and say if you consider getting one.

iPhone 4S to storm 15 new countries, come November 11

As promised, Apple is expanding the iPhone 4S availability. Their latest and greatest was released on October 14 in seven countries, followed by 22 new countries on October 28.

Currently, the iPhone 4S is already available in USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The iPhone 4S gang is now being expanded throughout Hong Kong, South Korea, Bulgaria, Albania, Armenia, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal and Romania. The official launch in these countries will be on November 11, while the pre-order campaign will start on November 4 (not available in Albania, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malta, Montenegro and Panama).

According to Apple the iPhone 4S will become available in more than 70 countries until the end of 2011, which means at least 26 more countries are going to start offering it via official channels.

Nokia kills the Nokia 600, no need to call the CSI team

Remember that there was a third Symbian Belle smartphone that was announced along with the Nokia 700 and 701? If you do, Nokia might have to kill you as the company has obviously pulled the plug on the Nokia 600 and is determined to pretending that it never happened.

Nokia 600 was announced in August and was expected to hit the shelves before Q3 ended, but that obviously never happened. We got no official comment from Nokia about the delay and now it appears that the phone has been cancelled.

All pages dedicated to the Belle-running Nokia 600 are now gone from the Nokia servers and even the Nokia developer website has no mention of it. Videos, featuring the Nokia 600 have been removed from the Nokia YouTube channels and if we hadn't actually seen the announcement we'd really be inclined to believe that the phone never existed.

We can't figure out what happened in the past two months that lead to the cancellation of a smartphone that was just weeks away from actually hitting the shelves, but seeing how Nokia handles things we'll probably never know.

It could be that there were some issues with its mass production or that the Finns want to focus more of your attention to their WP-running Lumia smartphones. Either way, if you had your sight set on the Nokia 600 you'll need to move along and find another device that suits your needs.

Thanks to Dion Guillaume for sending this in!

Acer quietly announces the Windows Phone running Allegro

In the quietest fashion, Acer announced the Windows Phone 7.5 running Allegro handset. The company's first device running Microsoft's mobile OS aims (as always) for a piece of the mid-range market.In terms of specs, you get a 1GHz single-core Qualcomm CPU and 8GB of built-in storage. The screen is a 3.6" LCD unit with WVGA resolution. A 5MP camera with LED flash can be found on the back of the device. The usual connectivity suite is on board. The Allegro is powered by a 1300 mAh battery. Its measures stand at 11.6 x 5.9 x 13mm, and its weight is 126 grams.

The smartphone will hit the shelves in France mid-November in the above shown color schemes. In case you are interested, it will cost you €299.

Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800 leak too, mystery is gone

Gee, Nokia's new Windows Phone devices just can't catch a break, can they? It's been literally an hour since the Nokia 900 leaked and guess what - its Windows Phone 7 siblings have showed up, too.

The Nokia Lumia 800, previously known by its codename Sea Ray and the Nokia Lumia 710, a.k.a Sabre showed up a few hours before the Nokia World event starts. And just like the Nokia 900, the two Lumia smartphones revealed a large part of their specs sheets in advance.

The photo above was obtained by WinRumors and shows what both phones will look like, but at this point you probably all knew what they look like anyway.

The Nokia Lumia 800 (that's the N9 look-alike) will measure 116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1 mm and will weigh 147 g. Its RAM has been confirmed to be 512MB.

The Nokia Lumia 710 will also pack half a gig of RAM and at 110 x 62.4 x 12.5mm its chassis will be about as big as that of the Lumia 800. 8GB of storage have been confirmed for this one.

We even got the Nokia Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 release dates. Both smartphones should come out in Europe in November.

The Nokia World is certainly going to be one of the most exciting we have seen with all those new handsets coming up. However, with so many leaks we are left wondering if Nokia and Microsoft will have anything to say to us at the keynote that we didn't know already.

Nokia 900 photo and specs leak ahead of announcement

It turns out that Nokia 800 won't be the Windows Phone flagship of the Finnish company after all. Just a few hours before Nokia World kicks off we got a press photo and a specs sheet of the Nokia N900, which is shaping to be the most capable member of the Nokia WP gang.

A specsheet of the Nokia 900 has unexpectedly appeared online, revealing pretty much everything we'd like to know about another of the upcoming Nokia Windows Phone 7 smartphones.

The Nokia 900 will run Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.5 Mango OS, on a Snapdragon chipset, featuring a single-core 1.4GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM. At the front, the Nokia 900 will have a large 4.3-inch ClearBack AMOLED just like the Nokia 800 Sun.

At the back an 8MP Carl Zeiss camera with auto-focus and dual LED flash will take care of taking photos. Underneath it will reside a 1800 mAh batter, which sounds quite promising.

The Nokia 900 will feature NFC, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP and will come in 16GB and 32GB flavors.

We can't wait for the Nokia World to start, so we can get to spend some quality time with this hot piece of smartphone. As you know we'll be covering the event live and we'll be bringing you the latest Nokia and Windows Phone news so keep watching this space.

Nokia 800 Sun coming up on Wednesday, will there be more?

So, Nokia World starts in a couple of days in London, and the world is expecting to see Nokia's first Windows Phone-based smartphones. The Finns announced they are switching to the Microsoft platform in February, but only now are we going to see an actual device, resulting from this partnership.

What to expect on the event then?

Nokia 800 Sun, previously known as Sea Ray, will be there for sure. Its official photos and teaser are already doing the rounds, so it will be a real surprise if we don't see an official announcement on Wednesday. Nokia 800 looks much like the MeeGo-running N9, but for the slightly smaller screen and the addition of three haptic-feedback buttons.

Nokia 703 and 710 might also debut at Nokia World, while the Mango-running Nokia Sabre and Ace have also leaked a few times.

Smart money is on Nokia announcing at least two of those phones. Previously, the start of Nokia world was also rumored to coincide with the beginning of the Symbian Belle roll-out, but the Finns officially denied that.

Nokia World is less than two days away now, so it won’t be long before we see an actual WP7 Nokia smartphone. And we'll be there covering the whole thing live, so stick around for the latest updates.

Nokia Q3 results are out: phone sales declining, operating loss

Nokia reported its Q3 performance and sales were down across the board. Compared to their Q2 performance, however, things are starting to look up. Q3 should be Nokia's last quarter without Windows Phone handsets in the mix - the company is at a "make it or break it" point, with its future laying in the basket of Microsoft's mobile OS.

Let's go over the figures - net sales for Nokia's Devices & Services department were down 25% Year-on-Year (YoY) and down 1% sequentially. This resulted in operating profit going down 84% YoY to €132 million. Much better than the €247 million loss from the previous quarter, but the company as a whole still posted an operating loss of €71 million.

Total number of Nokias sold for the quarter was down 3% since last year, with smartphones taking a big 38% hit, while feature phones were actually up 8% YoY.

The Average Selling Price for Nokia phones in general fell - their feature phones now go for €32 on average (note that Nokia is selling €20 or so phones in droves). Smartphones go for €131 on average, down from the €133 ASP of last year.

Nokia takes the affordability of their phones as a point of pride. The big question is what happens when Windows Phone finally comes into play - a while back we heard they got the go-ahead from Microsoft to create a custom version ('Tango') intended to run on affordable WP7 handsets.

Anyway, looking at Nokia's numbers, both NAVTEQ and Nokia-Siemens Networks have been losing money in the recent quarters (the two accounted for €159 million in losses in Q3). We wonder what Stephen Elop's plans for the two are.

Check out Nokia's press release for a few more numbers and if you want all the details, have a look at the full report (PDF). http://www.nokia.com/results/Nokia_results2011Q3e.pdf

Nokia Sabre reveals itself in a live photo, comes with a price tag, too

After couple of leaks now it's time for Nokia Sabre's first live photo to surface. It's just a week before it gets officially announced at the Nokia World event in London and it looks the part as far as we are concerned.

Unfortunately, this photo doesn't reveal much of Sabre's hardware and according to our tipster, the Windows Phone 7 specific buttons are below the screen, but aren't really visible because of the camera flash of the N9 which took the photo.

We already revealed some of this Mango-running Sabre specs and our tipster confirms them. The Nokia Sabre will indeed pack a 1.4GHz processor bundled with 1GB of RAM. At the front, the Sabre features a 3.5-inch LCD display, while at the back a 5MP camera will take care of taking photos and shooting video.

Oh, we also have the Sabre's price range. It'll cost around 300-350 euros SIM-free. Everything will eventually get confirmed at Nokia World's event in less than a week. We'll be there, so stay tuned for more!

Thanks, Geo!

HTC releases official statement regarding Ice Cream Sandwich

Following the launch of Google's Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, HTC released an official statement regarding the latter.

The statement talks about HTC reviewing Ice Cream Sandwich features and functionality to determine their upgrade path. Despite the improvements in Ice Cream Sandwich, however, HTC is determined to not let go of their Sense UI and will be working to combine both of them, taking into account the hardware of the device. From what we can tell, you can expect a Sensed-up version of Ice Cream Sandwich on their recently released phones such as the Sensation and EVO 4G but we wouldn't bet too heavily on slightly older phones like the Incredible S and Desire S getting the update.

You can read the full statement from HTC below.

We are excited about the latest update for Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, and are currently reviewing its features and functionality to determine our upgrade plans. Our goal for Android updates is to give every customer an improved user experience, which means balancing each phone's unique hardware, HTC Sense experience and the Android kernel. While our goal is to upgrade as many of our recent devices as possible, we are committed to maintaining every phone's performance and usability first. Please stay tuned for more updates on specific device upgrade plans.

Nokia 800 press shots emerge, three colors coming your way

Quite frankly, we almost lost count of the number of times we've seen leaked images and videos of it in the past four months. It all began back in June, when Mr. Elop himself accidentally (or not) showed it in front of a select crowd, and on, and on it went. Today, we continue the rumor cycle with leaked press shots of the Windows Phone running, Nokia 800.

As you can see above, the upcoming Windows Mango handset, which we came to know as Sea Ray, is an almost identical twin to the great looking Nokia N9. It even comes in the same color scheme as its MeeGo running cousin.

With stunning looks and a fresh Windows Phone OS on board, we cannot wait to see how the Finnish creation will fare against the Android and iOS heavyweights. The smartphone is expected to be officially launched next week (likely with a couple of other models) at Nokia World in London.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus designed with bypassing patents in mind

After yesterday's Ice Cream Sandwich event, Samsung's president of all things mobile JK Shin made an interesting note about the freshly announced Galaxy Nexus and the ongoing patent attrition warfare with Apple.

Now, Samsung wants to put a stop to all the patent infringement cases with its top smartphones and has taken the first step to do so by designing the Galaxy Nexus from the ground up to avoid being drawn to yet another patent lawsuit.

"Now we will avoid everything we can and take patents very seriously," said Shin Jong-kyun and later added, "Patents are very complicated and can be difficult to identify, but Samsung tried to ensure that no known patent by Apple is included in the new Android smartphone."

So does this mean that Samsung admits that in their past products some Apple patents were indeed infringed? And is the Galaxy Nexus now immune from more patent lawsuits being designed from the ground up with this sole purpose?

Samsung's mobile chief doesn't even know the answer to that last one, saying "We will see if (the Galaxy Nexus) will be 100 percent free from Apple lawsuits." We guess only time will tell.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus is finally official, comes in November

Finally, the news the whole Android community has been waiting for has arrived! Samsung and Google announced in their Unpacked event in Hong Kong the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

It's been a heavy rumor period for the device, as the Galaxy Nexus leaked on a few occasions and most of what Samsung just announced isn't a particular surprise, but, at least it is now official! The device is the first one of many more to come to run the newest version of the Android OS - Ice Cream Sandwich.

It is also the every first smartphone with an HD super AMOLED display, measuring at 4.65 inches boasting the resolution of 720x1280. The display is slightly curved, just like the Nexus S is, and now features a super quick response time of just 0.01ms.

Following the Honeycomb approach, the Galaxy Nexus lacks hardware control buttons in favor of virtual software ones, which are located on the bottom of the screen.

As we told you earlier today, under the hood the Galaxy Nexus is powered by the TI OMAP 4460 platform, boasting a 1.2GHz dual-core Cortex A9-based processor and 1GB of RAM. At the back the device packs a 5MP camera capable of shooting 1080p video, while at the front, there's the usual 1.3MP camera for video chatting. With Ice Cream Sandwich, this snapper can take and automatically stitch shots to make a panorama, shoot a time-lapse video and zoom while recording.

The Galaxy Nexus is fully future-proofed with LTE and NFC support on board, which should serve Google's Wallet project pretty well. Multiple carriers will be offering the smartphone in GSM HSPA version as well. The battery is now confirmed to be 1750mAh, which should keep it running for a day or two. The device will be offered in 16 or 32GB flavors expandable via a microSD card slot.

The hardware of the Galaxy Nexus is quite unique. On the bottom of the device has a hidden notification area, which glows with a green dot when you get a new email, message or miss a call. The back cover is also covered with a specially designed material called "Hyper Skin" to protect it from slipping.

Motorola DROID RAZR image leaks before launch

We're about twelve hours away from the Motorola event where they will be announcing the new DROID RAZR. Of course, they never mentioned the name of the device but the previous leaks and the teaser video provided enough clues. But if you think they were not enough, here comes the actual image of the phone.

This image was discovered by Droid-Life.com on Motorola's teaser site and gives us a good look at the new DROID RAZR. Well that's one name full of history. It must be said that it is indeed an attractive looking design, particularly the back with that sweet looking Carbon fiber adorning it.

You can also see the 4G LTE logo on the back, along with certain other details such as the FCC ID, which suggests that the battery is sealed. The back swiftly rises to a bulge near the top, where you can find the camera lens that claims to do 1080p video along with an LED flash and a loudspeaker.

On the side we can see the volume control keys and the power/lock key. The top has the headphone jack, USB port and what could be a microHDMI port.

The front also looks quite attractive, with a flush (Gorilla?) glass. We can see the front facing camera above the display and the four control keys and the microphone below. The display doesn't seem particularly big or maybe the phone is just too wide.

As for the rest of the details, we'll find those out soon enough.

Opera 12 alpha sees the light of day, blows your socks off with hardware acceleration

Opera 12 Alpha, also codenamed as Opera Next, has stepped out of the shadows and is now available for you to download. The Opera Software team has been working hard integrating a new HTML5 rendering engine, tweaking the navigation bar and most notably enabling full hardware acceleration for web page rendering.

What’s great about this hardware acceleration feature is that all the elements of a webpage get rendered by your graphics card, which increases the speed of displaying the page on your monitor.

Currently, hardware acceleration is supported only works through OpenGL, but as they move to a Beta release, Opera plans to add support for DirectX as well, which will add broader graphics card support. Being an Alpha release some bugs are not out of the question so proceed with caution.

Unfortunately, right now there’s lack of support for a wider range of video cards, so when you snatch the latest release off Opera’s download page, make sure you are making use of the graphics card acceleration by typing “opera:gpu” in the web browser’s address bar.

Are you the type of person to take alpha software for a spin?

Mango-running Nokia 710 peeks out of Nokia Developers site

With Nokia World fast approaching more and more upcoming Windows Phone 7.5 Mango devices getting their noses out of the closet. First it was the Nokia Sun, which was leaked from an Orange France roadmap and now it's the Nokia 710, found in Nokia's own Developers site by MyNokiaBlog.

Luckily, they managed to take a screenshot of some of the specs list before Nokia fix their error and remove the device from the site. Interestingly, the device is listed to run "Maemo Internet Tablet OS 2008 edition", but the facts tend to make this Nokia 710 more of a Windows Phone Mango material.

The Nokia 710 is going to feature the same size 3.7-inch TFT 480x800 pixels display like the Nokia Sun, but unlike it, it'll be powered by a ClearBlack technology, rather than AMOLED. Under the hood, the processor is said to be a single-core Cortex A8, clocked at 1.4GHz with 512 MB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory, expandable with a mircroSD card.

At the back the 710 will sport a 5 megapixel camera capturing video at 720p with a 28mm wide-angle lens. You can also expect the usual array of connectivity options like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The device will most likely be announced at the upcoming Nokia World event in London scheduled for October 26. Will we be there? You bet!

iPhone 4S and Galaxy S II snap sale records just like that

It's been only three days since the iPhone 4S started selling and it has already managed to allure more than 4 million people into buying it. Put in retrospect, in its first days of availability, the iPhone 4S outsells its predecessor more than two times. Whoa, those are some serious numbers.

This is an astonishing accomplishment taking into account that the device is currently available in only 7 countries - the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK, followed by another 22 countries on October 28 and 70 more by the end of 2011. This means that roughly 925 iPhone 4S have been sold every minute for the past three days. It's that crazy.

Samsung, on the other hand, don't share the crazy success of Apple's latest version of the iPhone, but they have also scored a landmark of their own. The Galaxy S family has surpassed a total of 30 million sales globally. The Galaxy S II has generated more than 10 million sales since its initial launch in April, while the original Galaxy S has sold in a total of 20 million unit sales since its release in 2010.

Let's hope we are going to see those records shattered by the upcoming Nexus Prime, which has been oh-so-bashfully making its way to the public.

The next iPhone – Steve Jobs’ final legacy, according to an analyst

According to Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar, the next version of the iPhone is the last project the late Steve Jobs was “intimately involved with from concept to final design” and that’s why the iPhone 5 will become a truly “cult classic”.

Continuing his analysis, Kumar goes on to saying that the iPhone 5 will be the same size of the current iPhone 4(S), but with a slimmer profile and a larger screen. However, that’s not all that surprising bearing in mind all the endless rumors and mockups we saw the past couple of month.

It seems logical that Apple’s former CEO would give more attention to a more substantial project, like the iPhone 5, instead of the iPhone 4S, being the minor upgrade it represents.

Starbucks launches “Pick of the week” in the UK – offers free iTunes downloads to customers

The offer has been available for Starbucks US coffee houses since 2006 and comes to the UK a week after the company announced free Wi-Fi access without the need to register.

The first complimentary offerings will be the latest song by James Morrison (My Dreams) and a free iBook (Limitless by Alan Glynn). Later on, UK Starbucks customers will be able to enjoy artists such as Coldplay, Tony Bennett and more.

Starbucks UK & Ireland VP of marketing and category, Brian Waring, has expressed that “Digital offers are very important to us” and that there’s an “exciting digital programme ahead for 2012.”

BlackBerry 9380 and 9790 get officially announced, sort of

RIM has announced the new BlackBerry 9380 and 9790 smartphones. However, this is not your usual announcement, with detailed specs and press images. The announcement comes in the form of a blog post which was addressed towards the developer community, informing them of the new handsets.

There is very little information regarding the two phones available at this time. All that RIM has divulged is that the 9380 will have a full touchscreen interface like the Storm and a 3.2-inch, 480 x 360 resolution display. The 9790 on the other hand will have a 2.44-inch, 480 x 360 resolution display with a full QWERTY keypad. Of course, both the phones will be running the latest BlackBerry OS 7.

BlackBerry has released SDK with built-in simulators for each of these phones. This was actually the main purpose of the blog post. We're guessing the actual announcement will be happening soon enough.

Apple unveils iPhone 4S with dual-core CPU and 8MP camera

Apple just unveiled the newest member of its iPhone lineup of smartphones. Dubbed the iPhone 4S, the latest offering by the Cupertino-based company is more of an incremental upgrade than a complete overhaul of the iPhone 4. Design and dimensions stay the same, but there's a notable increase in processing power.

The Apple iPhone 4S comes with the A5 chipset, which is the SoC that powered the iPad 2. It comes with a dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU and PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, which as we know is a pretty powerful combo.

The Apple iPhone 4S also improves on the network data speeds of its predecessor. It's not the LTE everyone was hoping for, but 14.4 Mbps is still pretty good for most market. More importantly, however, the iPhone 4S is a true world phone, supporting both GSM and CDMA networks.

The other major upgrade that the Apple iPhone 4S brings is in the camera department. The 5 megapixel shooter of its predecessor has been replaced by an 8 megapixel unit and the video recording has been upgraded from 720p to 1080p.

Much like its predecessor, the iPhone 4S will come in black and white color versions (only this time the white one will be available from day one). However there will be three storage options this time - a larger 64GB edition will join the 16GB and 32GB ones.

The iPhone 4S pre-orders will start on October 7, while actual sales begin on October 14. Pricing on a two-year contract is $199,$299 and $399 for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions, respectively.

In the US the Apple iPhone 4S will be available with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint (for the first time). Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany, and Japan will be the other countries in the first wave to get the new iPhone, while 63 other countries will join before the end of the year.

Nokia sweet-talking devs into creating apps for WP7, partner with Microsoft to really reel them in

Nokia bet the house on the Microsoft deal, so they’re trying to make sure all goes well once their first Windows Phone 7 handset launches. They are reportedly talking to app developers, trying to lure them in and expand the app catalogue of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.

Microsoft is also trying to grow the developer base for WP7 through promotions of their own, so devs can cash in on the incentives from both companies.

Nokia is offering app developers funding for their projects, promises to promote the apps and will even pre-load some of them on the upcoming WP7 phone (the Sea Ray), according to people who are in talks with the Finnish company.

Also, Microsoft and Nokia together are offering assistance with coding the app and joint promotion.

It’s good to see both Nokia and Microsoft recognize the importance of a bountiful app store, the question now remains whether devs will bite.

Alleged Nokia Searay for T-Mobile Germany image leaks

A very legit looking image of the Nokia Searay has just been leaked by The Nokia Blog. The image is allegedly from T-Mobile Germany and has a short description of the phone on the side.

If we translate the text to English, we get the following result:

Drive safely to your destination with Nokia - including 3D. Representation and voice navigation Windows Mobile 7.5 (Mango) operating system. 3.7" brilliant domed AMOLED display.

The phone itself looks identical to the N9, as it did in all the previous leaks, which means it is also very easy to fake it. Just like The Nokia Blog, we're finding it a bit hard to swallow that Nokia would call the final version of the phone by the name 'Searay'. More so because recently Nokia had a poll to decide the name for their series of Windows Phone 7 devices, with options like Phoenix, Genesis, etc. This means the actual phones will probably be called something like the Nokia Genesis N1 instead of simply Searay.

Things are yet to get finalized though, so eventually they might just go with individual names instead of having a name for the series. Whatever it is, we'll find out before the end of this year.