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Profile photo of second generation Nexus 7 leaks, reveals its dimensions

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The Google Nexus 7 leaks are coming in at such rate lately, that it would be a real shock if the slate doesn’t debut at the Google Android event on Wednesday. This latest piece of the puzzle is delivered by evleaks, which got hold of a photo of the profile of the new Nexus 7.

While the image itself doesn’t really reveal a great deal of new info, it lets us calculate the exact dimensions of the affordable tablet. According to the proportions shown by this image and the ones leaked earlier, the second generation Nexus 7 will measure 196x112x7.9mm. Read more »

Asus posts Q1 financial report, profits boosted by 3 million tablet sales

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Asus has posted its quarterly financial report, covering the three months ending in March. The manufacturer has made $3.5 billion in revenue and $202 million net profit. The numbers compare favorably to both the previous quarter and the same period of last year.

The detailed breakdown reveals that the PC sales of the company have been affected by the overall market slowdown, but the strong performance of the Asus tablets has done well to compensate for it. Asus managed to ship 3 million tablets over the past three months, securing a sizeable chunk of the growing market. Read more »

Amazon Appstore hits China, offers paid apps before Google Play

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Amazon continues to expand the availability of its own Android Appstore. The company announced the launch of the service in the Chinese market today, offering a large variety of both free and paid apps.

Interestingly enough, the Google Play store in China still doesn’t offer paid apps, making Amazon the first major player to offer those in the Far Eastern country. Rumors have it that the announcement will be followed by the release of the Kindle tablet lineup in the Chinese market, but we are yet to hear a timeframe for that. Read more »

Apple iPhone 5 video stabilization given a proper spanking by Morpho MovieSolid software

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As we were cruising through the MWC 2013 grounds a particularly interesting piece of Android software caught our eye. Developed by the relatively unknown Japanese company Morpho, the MovieSolid video stabilization doesn’t require any special hardware to work, yet yields impressive results.

Using only the data from the camera sensor and the smartphone’s gyro sensor (if available), the MovieSolid solution manages to turn an otherwise shaky video into something that looks as if shot with a steadicam. We tested the software against the Apple iPhone 5, which we have found to have the best digital stabilization in the smartphone game so far and we were really stunned by the result. Read more »

Sony Xperia Z, HTC Butterfly and Oppo Find 5: 1080p droids gather at HQ, star in a mouth-watering photo session

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If you are following our Facebook page (and if you aren’t you totally should), you already know that two exciting new smartphones landed at our office today. The HTC Butterfly and the Sony Xperia Z are the among the several 5″ 1080p 2013 flagships that promise to change your definition of sharpness forever.

And while our review squad has already been dispatched to take the two beasts through their paces, we thought we might give you a few shots in advance to feast your eyes on. The Xperia Z and the Butterfly are joined by the Oppo Find 5, which has a screen of the same size and resolution as them. Read more »

App Store hits 40 billion downloads, has 775,000 apps already

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Apple might not be attending CES, but it still had an important announcement to make today. The official iOS app repository has crossed the 40 billion downloads mark. Having more than half a billion user accounts, the App Store has delivered almost half of those apps in the last year alone, showing impressive exponential growth.

Currently there are 775,000 apps available at the App Store, including 300,000 apps optimized for the iPad’s larger screen. There was no exact information on the number of apps, which make full use of the taller iPhone 5 screen and the high-res iPads with Retina screens, though. Read more »

7″ Acer Iconia B1-A71 unveiled – lets you taste Jelly Bean on the cheap

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Acer has just introduced the latest addition to its lineup of Android-running tablets. The new slate is called the rather peculiar B1-A71 and will cost about €119 after taxes. This will make it the most affordable Android 4.1 Jelly Bean slate from a big manufacturer.

That kind of money buys you a 7″ display of WSVGA resolution (1024 x 600 pixels), a 1.2GHz dual-core Mediatek processor and 8GB of storage, expandable via a microSD card slot. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS connectivity are also available as well as a front-facing camera and a standard microUSB port. Read more »

Nokia Lumia 920 vs Apple iPhone 5: stabilization shootout – UPDATED

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Nokia made a pretty big deal of the stabilization feature of its Lumia 920 flagship smartphone. The handset comes with the Floating lens technology, which is real optical image stabilization, as opposed to the digital solution of its competitors.

Naturally, we were very curious to find out how big a difference the new technology makes, so we decided to pin the Nokia Lumia 920 against the Apple iPhone 5 (which has the most efficient digital video stabilization we have seen so far). Read more »

Nokia releases three promo videos for the Asha 205 and Asha 206

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Nokia has just introduced a couple of new members of its Asha family today and, as the tradition goes in such cases, the company released a few promo videos to demo their strengths.

The QWERTY-packing Nokia Asha 205 had a single clip dedicated to it, while the Asha 206 got two videos. Check them out after the break. Read more »

A squadron of Galaxy S III units attacks the iOS fleet in this epic Phone Wars video

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Here at GSMArena we are huge fans of well-made parody videos and when we find a good one we can’t help but share it with you. What you are about to see might not be the highest-budget production in the world, but it’s certainly the most hilarious clips we’ve seen lately.

So there’s this fleet of iPhones and iPads that has just completed a hyper drive jump to the orbit of planet Earth, where they are attacked by a squadron of Galaxy S IIIs. An epic battle forms up and a surprising victor emerges. Read more »

We take the HTC DROID DNA camera for a spin, come back with still and video samples

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We were able to take the HTC DROID DNA camera out for a spin and see if the beastly smartphone can also double as a proper cameraphone. The 8MP camera of the smartphone is operated in a way very similar to that of the HTC One X+, which we just reviewed.

This means that the still camera and the camcorder interface share the same screen with the two shutter keys located on the right side. Read more »

HTC DROID DNA Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset performance examined in detail

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We managed our usual set of benchmarks on the freshly announced HTC DROID DNA and its Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset. We were curious to see how the four Krait cores and the Adreno 320 GPU handle the FullHD screen screen.

The latest Qualcomm chipset didn’t disappoint and we saw the HTC DROID DNA post some pretty impressive scores in our tests. Its high-end rivals were often found lagging behind and at times they were feeling downright underpowered. Read more »

Google aims to prove how great the Nexus 10 screen is with these impressive photos

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The Retina-beating screen of the Google Nexus 10 sure sounds great on paper, but does it have the real-life performance to back it up? Google’s Romain Guy is keen to prove so, by posting several impressive shots.

Yes, what you see here is not a rendering, but a real photo of the actual Google Nexus 10, captured with a DSLR camera. The screen was even compared with a printed magazines to highlight its impressively low reflectivity. Read more »

New Google Nexus lineup promo video released: Google Now in focus

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Google has just unveiled two new additions to its lineup of Nexus devices, plus a couple of new versions of the popular Nexus 7 tablet. And, as the tradition goes in such cases, the company has released a promo video, highlighting the strongest points of the newly announced devices.

In this case the video is mostly focused on the Google Now voice-operated service, demonstrating how you can ask your Nexus device just about anything and it will immediately find the answer for you. Read more »

Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S III: The aftermath

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So, you’ve read our Apple iPhone 5 vs Samsung Galaxy S III comparison, but there are still some questions you had that remain unanswered? Well here is the place to ask them – just post them in the comments section and we’ll do our best to answer them.

To get the conversation started, we’ll go through some of those posted in the comments section of the comparison itself. Read more »