The rumor mill has been pretty confident that he Unpacked 2 event on September 4 on IFA grounds will bring the new Galaxy Note III phablet and the Galaxy Gear smartwatch, but now there’s official confirmation straight from the EVP of Samsung Mobile.

The EVP, Lee Young-hee, calls it a “concept wearable device” and says it’s aimed at young trend-setters. Samsung is confident that the Galaxy Gear will shake things up in the mobile industry. Read more »

There have been some particularly cheeky iPhone knockoffs, but this one is pretty entertaining. It was slowly, teasingly revealed to a mostly sarcastic crowd at 4chan with a pretty big plot twist. At any rate, it’s a fun detraction from the deluge of iPhone 5S and 5C leaks.

Like all knockoffs, this one has an almost-but-not-quite the same name as the original product. So, here’s the iploxe. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 mini comes in a dual-SIM version, just like its big sibling. But with the same chipset and same battery, we can expect lower talk time and standby, with the same web browsing and video playback times, right?

As it turns out, no. Looking at the specs sheet reveals no changes between the single and dual-SIM versions, but there’s potentially a new modem as the talk time went up. Read more »

The Sony Xperia M is the company’s next entry-level dual-core phone. It shares many of the features of the Xperia L but is positioned lower on the ladder with a smaller, 4″ screen (but with the same FWVGA resolution), same chipset and a 5MP / 720p camera.

The Xperia M has a dual-SIM option, making it an direct upgrade over the Xperia E (which also came in single and dual-SIM versions) and it’s a huge improvement over it. Read more »

AdDuplex is back with its monthly report on the Windows Phone situation. We’re seeing the first steps of the new Nokia Lumia 1020 flagship, which seems to be outsekkubg its Lumia 928 sibling but is still too young (just a few weeks on sale) for any more detailed numbers.

There are only two companies of note when it comes to Windows Phone – Nokia with about 87% of the market and HTC with about 10%. But this doesn’t mean the WP market is unified. Read more »

The Hyetis Crossbow pre-order campaign has begun – for $1,200 you can have one of the first Swiss-made smartwatches. Note that this is a limited run of 500 units. The watch should have a 41MP camera sensor (actual resolution subject to change) with optical zoom, an authentic Swiss watch movement and more connectivity than you thought possible.

The watch body will be made from grade 5 titanium with a “Dark Knight” finish. It has a sapphire glass on the front with anti-glare coating and is waterproof up to 250m. Read more »

The mobile market has many competing display techs and each flagship seems to go a different route – Triluminos for the Sony Xperia Z Ultra, Super LCD3 for the HTC One and Super AMOLED for the Galaxy S4. So which one is the best?

It turns out it’s difficult to pick – both LCD and AMOLED panels have advanced to the point where the weak points have been all but eliminated Read more »

Do you get blackout drunk regularly? Because if you do, Nokia thinks you should buy the Lumia 925 – the optical image stabilization and ZEISS optics mean you can get good photos of the dodgy, poorly lit night clubs you visit, so that you can remember what you did last night.

Someone must have had quite the hangover when they thought of this ad. Read more »

Oppo is working on a cameraphone called the N1 – it leaked early this month and now the company has officially confirmed that it will announce it in September with a couple of teaser images. The Oppo N1 will be the company’s next flagship, at least until the Find 7 is ready (which Oppo said will launch after September).

So far we’ve seen renders of the device, with info suggesting it will have a 12MP camera with a chip called Owl (a nocturnal creature, hint, hint) and a special N-Lens, plus a xenon flash. Read more »

The Oppo R819 is impressively thin at 7.3mm, but that didn’t come at the cost of the battery – 2,000mAh sounds good, when you consider other minis like the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini duos and the HTC Desire 600 dual sim both have about 1,900mAh batteries.

The chipset with a quad-core Cortex-A7 and PowerVR SGX544 should be very power efficient too, but it’s driving a 720p screen rather than qHD like on some other minis, that’s about 78% more pixels to draw. Read more »

The Oppo R819 was announced just hours ago and we’re ready to share our first impressions of the new dual-SIM Android. It’s impressively thin and light and the screen looks great too. But can the up-and-coming company challenge the established players?

Samsung and HTC both have dual-SIM versions of their flagships, but those are hard to find and expensive. In comparison the more affordable R819 aims for broader availability, while also offering a quad-core chipset and a good camera. Read more »

Facebook takes security seriously – as it should seeing how over a billion people trust it with the private details of their lives. Yet a high profile incident came to question the company’s capability. An IT researcher found a vulnerability that allows you to post a comment on anyone’s wall, even if you’re not friends (which Facebook rules prohibit).

The researcher initially reported the problem, but after feeling that Facebook didn’t take the issue seriously, he posted on none other than Mark Zuckerberg’s wall (in case you don’t know, Zuckerberg is founder and CEO of Facebook). Read more »

Intel is making big promises with its next-generation Atom chips from the Bay Trail platform like $200 Windows 8 tablets. So, the “Samsung with Bay Trail SoC” that appeared in some shipping manifests is a cause for some excitement.

Bay Trail chips will be built on a 22nm process, hit 2.1GHz and along with the CPU core redesign, the chips will use Intel’s own GPU architecture from Ivy Bridge. Read more »

The Nokia Lumia 1020 will be featured in a lot of head to head battles and today it’s time to tackle the Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom. The Lumia 1020 has its large, high resolution sensor (1/1.5″ 41MP) to rely on, while the S4 zoom boasts 10x zoom that’s something you just don’t see on a device with full phone capabilities.

Those lead to different strengths, like much better bokeh effect from the Lumia 1020, while the S4 zoom is true to its name and wins hands down when it comes to zoom. Read more »

Your Nokia Lumia 1020 has a 41MP image sensor? That’s cute – so does the Hyetis Crossbow smartwatch. Also, the specs sheet is so long it will make your head spin (and in the dizziness you’ll wonder if this is just vaporware).

The watch has a Swiss-made movement and that’s the only thing that will remain constant – Hyetis is promising to update the rest as time goes on. Read more »