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New Apple iPad: expectations vs reality

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The rumor marathon leading to the announcement of the new iPad was one of the most intensive we have ever witnessed, so naturally we expected to see plenty at the Apple event tonight.

Now we’ll try and go through the rumors that came up most frequently on the web and see if the new Apple iPad actually matches the expectations or fails to deliver. Read more »

Apple brought the MacBook naming mess to the iPad, will the iPhone follow?

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One key bit of information, delivered at today’s iPad event, is that Apple is adopting its Mac naming scheme for the iPad series. So instead of introducing the iPad 3, or the iPad HD, or whatever other name they come up with, the Cupertino guys just called it iPad. Yeap, just like the first Apple slate.

So now we have the iPad succeeding the iPad 2, which in turn came to replace the iPad. This means that the iPad 2 is hotter than the iPad, but not as hot as the iPad. Confusing right? Read more »

Official Foursquare app hits Bada

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If Foursquare is your social network of choice and you happen to have a Bada handset we have some great news for you. The official app has just landed at the Samsung Apps repository and is available as a free download to anyone interested.

Previously, Bada users had to resort to the Foursquare mobile version, but now they got their own apps to deliver the functionality of the popular network. The app is compatible with all versions of the Samsung proprietary OS, so you should be invited to the party no matter what Bada smartphone you have. Read more »

Next SimCity game gets two more trailers, promises of availability in 2013

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SimCity, the game that started a whole new genre, is getting a new version in 2013. The news was confirmed by the developers from EA and Maxis and we even got a couple of trailers to go with it.

The next SimCity title is going to be powered by Maxis’ proprietary GlassBox Engine and should offer an unmatched level of fine detail. There will also be deeper social integration with neighboring cities will directly affect one another. Read more »

Opera Mini 6.5 lands on BlackBerry smartphones

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Opera Software just announced the availability of its Opera Mini 6.5 mobile browser on yet another platform. The native version of the popular data-saving browser just hit the BlackBerry App World and, if you happen to have a BlackBerry OS smartphone, you can have it right away.

You need to be running version 4.2.1 or later of the BlackBerry OS, no matter your carrier or country. This means that Opera Mini will be available on every half decent BlackBerry device, but the PlayBook tablet. Read more »

Firefox for Nokia N9 gets Flash support

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Just as promised, Nokia delivered Flash support for its N9 MeeGo flagship. Since Adobe officially abandoned the development of its mobile Flashplayer, it was down to the smartphone’s manufacturer to deliver it.

Well, the MeeGo-compatible Flashplayer is now available as a free download from the Ovi store and you can try it right away. There is a catch though – you will need to be using the recently released Firefox browser as it is the only one to support the plugin. Read more »

Diablo III release date surfaces – mark April 17 on your calendars

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Blizzard certainly took its sweet time developing the next title in the Diablo series and, honestly, we don’t think you can blame the company. After the immense success that was the Diablo II, it would take an incredibly good game to build on it and those can’t be created overnight.

And here comes the exciting news – all the coding is nearing completion and we are just over a month away from the announcement we’ve all been waiting for. According to a tip from Activision Italy, Diablo III will be hitting the shelves on April 17. Read more »

Mozilla Boot2Gecko platform hands-on

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As the smartphone world matures, revolutionary ideas get harder and harder to come by. Yet, this’s exactly what the Mozilla Foundation brought to the MWC 2012 with its Boot2Gecko platform – a cloud based open-source mobile OS, which looks cool and should perform great on even very modest hardware.

Boot2Gecko is using the latest open web standards for its apps, which means that apps written for it will be compatible with just about any smartphone running the OS, or even every device with an HTML5-enabled browser. And don’t worry – even though the OS itself is cloud-based, you might still use your phone offline and even run apps and games on it – offline caching is a technology already supported by the web standards. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 stops by our office, poses for the camera

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The just announced Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 was kind enough to come by our office on its way to the MWC shelves. The latest Samsung slate is supposed to bring the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich experience on the 10.1” screen, while keeping the price as reasonable as possible.

Before switching it on, you can barely tell the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 apart from its predecessor, but the actual user experience is quite different with the second gen slate. Read more »

Asus teases the Padfone ahead of MWC, reveals its inspiration

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Asus joined the teaser game ahead of the MWC and released a short video of Matroshka dolls through its official YouTube channel. Titled “Divided We Stand. Together We Rock”, the video says does the math and concludes that “1+1+1″ gives you endless possibilities.

You know, just like a phone, which can power a tablet and take a keyboard dock would. The Asus Padfone was already confirmed by the company, but there were very few details given. Read more »

Asus Transformer Prime bootloader can now be unlocked

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Asus is finally setting its Transformer Prime beast of a tablet free. The company just released the official tool that unlocks the bootloader of the Tegra 3-powered Transformer Prime, enabling the dev community to do its magic properly.

The unlocking tool is available through the Asus Transformer Prime support page over here. You need to have your Transformer Prime updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for it to work, so if you haven’t gone through with the update yet, now is the time. Read more »

iPad 3 leaks continue: 8 megapixel camera and A5X chipset spotted

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At this point, you’ve probably heard so many rumors about the iPad 3 that you don’t know what to believe anymore. Well here we have a couple of photos, which might be a bit more trustworthy.

The photographs are reportedly depicting the new 8 megapixel camera that the latest Apple slate has and its A5X chipset. Read more »

Samsung officially spins off LCD business, to focus on OLED instead

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From rumor to official in just over a week – the Samsung officially announced that it will separate its LCD division. The troubled division will start acting as a separate company at the start of the next month.

The Koreans believe that getting rid of the manufacturer of LCD panels will free up resources and will allow the Samsung display division to respond quicker to the clients needs. Read more »

Our blog gets a mobile version, give it a try

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Mobile versions are what we do this month and now it’s our blog’s turn to get smartphone-friendly. We put a lot of effort in that one too and now we feel it’s ready to make its official debut.

Our main goal when designing the mobile version of the blog.gsmarena.com was to reduce the data needed to load it and improve its loading speed without sacrificing any of the functionality. Good performance and intuitive navigation were also high on our priority list.

Read more »

New Samsung Galaxy S II ICS ROM surfaces, we benchmark it

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Yet another Samsung Galaxy S II Android 4.0 ICS ROM escaped the Samsung R&D center and walked right into the hand of indie developers and smartphone enthusiasts. Carrying the version number I9100XXLPH, the new ROM has a build date of February 9 and, as you can expect, it is the most stable and functional ICS ROM for the Galaxy S II to date.

The LPH release is only a short step away from feeling like a polished final ROM. It’s smooth enough, it supports all of the phone’s hardware and it gets rid of the nagging “set up update” notification from previous beta releases. Read more »