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Transformer Prime ICS update will come on January 12, unlocked bootloader to follow, GPS is no good

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We’ve got some good news and some bad news for Asus Transformer Primer owners and future buyers. The company just provided an exact time frame for the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for its slate and it isn’t too far away either.

The ICS update rollout for the Transformer Prime should start on January 12, which is just 9 days away now. The company also said that it’s already working to release a tool that will enable you to unlock the Tegra 3-powered beast bootloader and get all those custom ROMs up and running. Read more »

Samsung unveils the DV300F, a dual screen camera with Wi-Fi connectivity

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We are less than a week into the year and we already have a second announcement from Samsung. The Korea giant’s digicam division has joined its telecom in unveiling a new product at the start of 2012.

The company introduced the Samsung DV300F – the next member of its lineup of dual screen cameras. This time there’s also Wi-Fi connectivity, which enables you to email your images and videos or upload them to Facebook, Picasa, Flickr and YouTube. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy Nexus battery life fully tested, results come out disappointing [TEST]

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The last battery test of the year is really something special. Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a key device for both Samsung and Android and as such there was no way it could avoid being subjected to our traditional battery test.

So far, smartphones with HD displays have really struggled to get good grades in our test – the LG Nitro HD is the worst performer so far and the HTC Rezound is just above it in the leaderboard. The Samsung Galaxy Note did manage to put in a pretty good performance despite its HD screen, but that one had a huge 2500 mAh battery. Read more »

BlackBerry Curve 9380 battery life test over, results are inside [TEST]

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BlackBerry is the last of the major platforms to get a representative in our battery test. The BlackBerry Curve 9380 did the rounds at our battery test and we were as curious as you to find more about the BlackBerry OS 7 energy efficiency.

The BlackBerry Curve 9380 comes with a 3.2″ screen of HVGA+ resolution, which should really take much less juice to run than the displays of any of the other smartphones we have tested. However, RIM only managed to squeeze a 1230 mAh battery inside the little fella, so we probably shouldn’t expect miracles here. Read more »

Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V enters the battery test arena, leaves smiling

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We’ve are done with the battery testing of yet another smartphone. The Sony Ericsson neo V might just be an emergency substitute for the injured star player, but that doesn’t mean it can get away with anything here.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V 3.7″ WVGA LCD screen is coupled with a 1500 mAh battery, which led us to expect a performance somewhere around the middle of the pack. As it turned out later, the neo V exceeded our expectations and turned out one of the better performers we have seen. Read more »

CMC Compiler lets you create a CyanogenMod ROM of your own

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One of the best parts of an open system like Android is that you can modify it and tweak it as much as you like until you finally end up with something perfectly tailored for your needs (or brick your device). And if you have already tried all those custom ROMs that someone else created and found joy in none of them we have some good news for you.

Thanks to lithid-cm from the XDA developers’ forum you can now create a customized CyanogenMod ROM yourself. It’s all using command line interfaces and it’s not pretty, but it’s fairly effective, despite its alpha status. Read more »

Zephyr is $2.99 tweak that lets you have MeeGo-like gestures on iOS

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The MeeGo way of handling multiple applications is so cool that it was always a matter of time before it found its way to other platforms. And iOS users are the first lucky ones who get to try it, thanks to a tweak created by the popular developer chpwn.

The tweak called Zephyr lets you manage apps by pushing them away from the screen, just like you would on a Nokia N9. And the smoothness is all there too. Read more »

Nokia Link for N9 updated, plays nice with Vista and XP

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Nokia just announced that a second beta version of its Nokia Link software is now available for download. The app that lets you sync the multimedia files on your Nokia N9 with your computer is now compatible with Windows Vista and Windows XP in addition to the previously supported Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

You are also now able to copy mobile content to and from smart playlists in iTunes and Windows Media Player. Plus, the Nokia software developers claim to have streamlined the process of deleting files from the smartphone. Read more »

Meizu MX completes our battery test, the result is nothing to write home about

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We got yet another high-end Android smartphone to complete our battery test trials. The Meizu MX came up as a large unknown to our office, but quickly started earning fans among the team and completed our review as one of the very decent droids out there.

With a 1600 mAh battery and a 4″ screen with a resolution of 960 x 640 pixels, we were expecting a result somewhere in the middle of the pack and that’s about what we got from the MX. Read more »

China launches its own geo-positioning system, promises impressive accuracy

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China is finally done with the development of its own geo-positioning system. Named Beidou, the new GPS alternative promises to provide your location with accuracy of up to 10 meters, your speed without erring by more than 0.2 m/s and give you the exact time plus minus 0.02 millionth of a second.

To put things into perspective, the American GPS has a margin of error of 20 meters when finding your location. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy Nexus GSM brings more Ice Cream Sandwiches to our office, we party on video [VIDEO]

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It’s finally here, folks – the droid you have all been looking for has finally arrived at our doorstep. We’ve obviously been very good this year as Santa sent us the most amazing Christmas gift in the face of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (in fact he sent us two of those).

We’ve already rolled up our sleeves and started inspecting the Android Ice Cream Sandwich flagship and we hope to be back with the answers of all your questions sometimes next week. Read more »

EA brings Real Racing 2 to the Android Market, lets you try its sweet graphics for free

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Android users have been rightfully jealous of iOS for having exclusivity of one of the hottest racing games for some time now. Fortunately, EA has finally decided to right the wrong and brought Real Racing 2 to the Android market.

One of the most elaborate racing games for mobile platforms landed in the official app repository of the platform the other day and has already gathered a significant amount of downloads. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 is next to taste Ice Cream Sandwich unofficially

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The hacking community is on a roll. Over the past days and weeks we saw about a dozen Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs for difference smartphones surface and we even got to play with one of them.

Now, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 joins the list of devices to get unofficial Android 4.0 support. Samsung promised that this one will get an official ICS update, but thanks to the omnipotent devs at the XDA-developers you don’t have to wait that long to try it out. Read more »

LG Optimus LTE SU6200 comes to spread its AH-IPS magic around our office, we unbox it on video [VIDEO]

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Yet another high-end phone appeared at our doorstep today. The LG Optimus LTE SU6200 is the pioneer of the company’s brand new AH-IPS display, which aims to challenge the best on the market.

As usual on such occasions we thought you might be interested in seeing a quick hands-on video garnished with our first impressions of the smartphone. Read more »

GetJar does a Gold sale, lets you have more than 100 Android apps for free

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The only thing we love more than high-quality apps are high-quality apps for free. And thanks to the latest GetJar promotion you will be able to get more than a 100 of those on your droid.

All you need to do is visit GetJar’s mobile website and download their Android app. From there you can browse the hundred free titles (including some pretty nice game) and download the ones you are interested in. Read more »