The best-known custom Android ROM, CyanogenMod, has turned from a hobby project to a proper company as Steve Kondik (the man who started it) announces the foundation of CyanogenMod Inc.

The baby-faced company has reportedly secured $7 million in funding and is looking to become the third ecosystem behind regular Android and iOS (watch your back, BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone). Read more »

BlackBerry just jumped into the 5″ smartphone ring with the new Z30, up from the “small” Z10 with a 4.2″ screen. The BlackBerry Z30 also launches the new BlackBerry OS 10.2 with a number of new features.

The first promo video for the Z30 is out and it underlines the advantages of the Z30 and the updates that come with the new version of the OS. Read more »

It’s been days since the pre-order for the iPhone 5c started and yet Apple hasn’t bragged about the millions of iPhones it has sold in the first 24 hours. The iPhone 5, for example, scored 2 million pre-orders in the short time period, the 4S managed a million and the iPhone 4 scored 600,000 pre-orders in the first 24 hours way back in 2010.

So, what’s going on with the iPhone 5c, is it doing equally well? China Unicom, the county’s second biggest carrier, has reported that 100,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s have been made (and they only started taking them today). Pre-ordered iPhone 5c units will arrive by September 21, while the 5s is listed as out of stock right now. Read more »

Jolla just announced that its Sailfish OS has reached two-fold compatibility with Android – it can run Android apps but also the OS itself can run on Android phones. This is major news as it solves the two big problems facing any upstart OS – it’s difficult to get hardware manufacturers to make devices for it and difficult to get devs to make apps for it.

By the looks of it, if a maker wishes to have a spin, it could put Sailfish on a phone or tablet that was designed with Android in mind. Read more »

Sony is trying to bring out your inner Gordon Ramsey with a special edition of the Xperia Tablet Z – the Kitchen Edition. Yep, you read that right – the water-resistant tablet isn’t afraid of the kitchen environment that usually holds many dangers for an electronic device.

So, what sets the Xperia Tablet Z Kitchen Edition from the regular edition? Read more »

Intel has been trying to get into the mobile business and has had moderate success so far, but with the new Bay Trail chipset the chip giant may have finally done it. Bay Trail chips will use the new Silvermont CPU cores and Intel’s own GPUs like the ones used in Haswell processors.

Bay Trail will be under the Atom brand for tablets (Z3600 for dual-core CPUs, Z3700 for quad-core) and Celeron and Pentium for laptops (N2000 and N3000 respectively) and desktops (J1000 and J2000). Read more »

Three companies, three approaches to the “best camera” – Nokia uses a huge sensors with a staggering amount of pixels, HTC used fewer, but bigger pixels and Sony settled for something in between. So, how did it work out for the Japanese company?

A shootout coming from Vietnam tries to provide an answer by pitting Sony’s new hotness, the Xperia Z1, against the Nokia 808 PureView and the HTC One mini. Read more »

The Moto X is assembled in the USA , challenging “conventional wisdom”, the experts and so on. Dennis Woodside, CEO of Motorola penned a blogpost explaining how and why Moto did it.

Anyway, you can take a drive to Fort Worth, Texas to see the plant where every Moto X sold in the US is built. I mean “take a drive” with Google’s Street View cars that even went inside the facility. Read more »

Apple didn’t livestream the iPhone 5s and 5c event, there wasn’t even an unofficial stream. However, the company has put up a recording of the whole event so you can experience the excitement of the announcement.

Keep in mind that Apple being Apple, the video requires QuickTime to watch. Read more »

Apple just announced the new iPhone 5s and bragged about its improved iSight camera. The new unit has a wider aperture (F/2.2 vs. F/2.4 for the iPhone 5) and “15% larger pixels” (1.5µm, up from 1.4µm). Feast your eyes on the first official camera samples from the new iPhone.

By the way, Apple skirted the subject a bit but the camera still shoots 8MP stills. Read more »

Alcatel brought out a trio of thin and light Android smartphones in the Idol line. The Alcatel One Touch Idol Alpha is the aluminum-clad leader of three with unibody design and attractive transparent elements for design and notification purposes. Then the Idol S follows close behind with a 4.7″ 720p screen dual and 8MP / 1080p camera. The Idol Mini brings up the rear with a thin and light design – 7.4mm thick, 96g – and a dual-SIM option.

Our hands-on impressions of the three follow after the break. Read more »

LG made a lot of fuss with the “learning from you” campaign, saying how much the company listened to its customers when designing the LG G2. Well, one of the most common wishes among users is a decent battery life, let’s see if LG delivered.

The relatively thin (8.9mm) body of the G2 with a curved back must not have made it easy – the battery has a stepped design to make the most of the internal volume and it worked, the phone packs a beefy 3,000mAh battery. Read more »

Microsoft’s first Surface tablet proved to be a rather expensive failure, but the Redmond company is undeterred and is rumored to be working on three new Surface tablets – Surface 2 (supposedly an RT successor), Surface Pro 2 and Surface Mini.

Little is known about the new Windows RT-running Surface 2, but the Surface Pro 2 will reportedly look pretty much the same as the current generation, just with a “refined” kickstand. Read more »

Along with the Vibe X smartphone, Lenovo also announced the 7″ S5000 tablet. The tablet shares the Vibe’s sleek design and while it’s not as thin as the smartphone (the S5000 is still pretty thin at 7.9mm), it’s very light for a 7″ tablet, tipping the scales at just 246g.

The tablet features 3G HSPA+ connectivity with voice call support (in select countries, the US isn’t getting it). There will also be a Wi-Fi only version. Read more »

The Sony Xperia Z Ultra is the middle sibling between the Xperia Tablet Z and the Xperia Z1 with its big (even by phablet standards) 6.4″ screen. Combine that with a powerful Snapdragon 800 chipset and an extra slim 6.5mm body and you get one monster of a device, but also a bit of a battery nightmare.

Still, the Z Ultra packs a 3,050mAh battery, which is quite a feat – all that at a respectable thinness. Read more »