Skype pushed out an update for its iOS app, which brings only a few improvements the most important of which is support for HD video calling. It only works on the iPad 4, though.

Owners of other iGadgets also have reason update – the Skype v4.1 brings improvements to the call quality and stability. Also, the country code picker has been redesigned. Read more »

The HTC One mini inherits one of the best designs of a smartphone ever, but it will be just a pretty paperweight if its battery runs out too quickly. It has a 1,800mAh Li-Po battery, compared to the 2,300mAh battery of the HTC One, but how that affects real-life performance.

The tinnier battery has to feed a smaller, lower res screen (4.3″ 720p vs. 4.7″ 1080p) and a smaller CPU and GPU, so we are not really sure what to expect here. Read more »

A South Korean version of the water-resistant Samsung Galaxy S4 Active called SHV-E470S popped up in GFXBench scores and wouldn’t you know it, it packs a Snapdragon 800 chipset and not the Snapdragon 600 that the international version has.

At this point this should come as no surprise – we saw a Snapdragon 800-powered Galaxy S4, a Snapdragon 600 Note II, dual-mode S4 and S4 mini, Samsung is trying out all the combinations. Read more »

We’ve been down this road before so take this with a pinch of salt. A Windows RT tablet by Nokia showed up in GFXBench scores. The device carried the model name RX-114, RX-108 was a model name associated with Nokia tablet early this year (maybe this Tegra 3-powered tablet).

The benchmark reported a resolution of 1371 x 771 pixels for the screen, presumably a minor error with the real resolution being 1368 x 768, the standard 10.1″ Windows RT tablet resolution. Read more »

Ubuntu promised to deliver the future of computing, the Ubuntu Edge – a smartphone that can replace your desktop computer. To make it happen, Canonical (the company behind both the Ubuntu Linux distro and the Edge phone) turned to the crowd funding site IndieGoGo, trying to raise $32 million in just 30 days.

It was a beautiful dream (especially the 4GB RAM, 128GB storage and sapphire glass for the screen), but unfortunately it seems to be losing steam despite the good start. Read more »

LG is not keeping the G2, its next Android flagship, a secret. The company even started announcing accessories for the phone, with photos and everything. Okay, it’s a flip cover so not much of the phone itself is visible, but LG could have waited a week until August 7 when the G2 will officially be unveiled.

Anyway, back to the accessory – it’s a flip cover with a window called QuickWindow that lets a small part of the screen show notification and controls from several apps (*cough*). Read more »

There are already a few laptops that use Gorilla Glass protection for their screens, but Corning Predicts the market for glass for touch-enabled laptop screens can become as big as the smartphone market so the company announced the Gorilla Glass NBT.

The NBT glass offers the usual advantages of Gorilla Glass – it resists scratches, hides the ones that appear and prevents their propagation. Read more »

Our first encounter with the HTC One mini was shorter than we would have liked so we invited it back for round 2. It made a good first impression, let’s see how it will fare once the feeling of novelty has subsided.

Holding it for a second time, we still think the One mini offers a more premium feel than many high-end phones do. Read more »

It would be a big shame if something on your brand new Nexus 7 2 broke, but as it turns out if it did, it wouldn’t be too hard to repair. iFixit took the new 7” Google tablet apart and awarded it a repairability score of 7/10.

The team also took apart a Chromecast, but mostly out of curiosity – the $35 stick is made out of a plastic enclosure and a motherboard, there’s nothing to repair there. Read more »

The BlackBerry Q5 is a business phone, meaning no matter what it has to have charge left over or you could miss all sorts of important calls and messages. The BlackBerry Z10 wasn’t bad with a 46 hours endurance score (but then it only has a 1,800mAh battery), then the Q10 beat it with a 56 hours score (but it does have a bigger 2,100mAh battery and smaller screen).

The Q5 has a 2,180mAh battery, same size screen as the Q10 (but LCD instead of AMOLED) and a lower clocked chipset. How did it do? Read more »

When Google announced the new Nexus 7 2, the team promised an almost double (1.8x) increase in performance for the CPU and a quadruple jump for the GPU over the original. Note that the number of pixels on the screen more than doubled with the move to WUXGA resolution.

So, what do the benchmarks show? Read more »

Sony was quick to announce the list of devices that will get Android 4.3 and release an AOSP ROM for the Xperia Tablet Z. The Japanese have since updated the post with good news for Xperia Z and Xperia ZL owners – they get an AOSP build too.

Note that this is the early days and just like the Xperia Tablet Z build things aren’t 100% operational and the builds aren’t suitable for daily use. Read more »

Apple reported that iPad sales had declined in the company’s third fiscal quarter this year from 17 million last year to 14.6 million. Now analysts from Citi Research say that Apple’s tablets will continue to lose market share even when the new iPad 5 and new iPad mini are announced.

Opposite to the iPad’s decline, the overall tablet market was on the rise during the third quarter. The expectation for the fourth quarter is for iPads to decline 7% year on year. Read more »

Google unveiled a smart HDMI stick for TVs – unlike most sticks we’ve seen so far, Chromecast runs a simplified version of Chrome OS rather than Android. It integrates with Google services like YouTube, Google Play Music, Google Play Video and the Chrome app (on a phone, tablet or laptop). Long story short, it’s the Nexus Q done right.

How does Chromecast work? Say you’re viewing a YouTube video on your phone (Android or iOS) and hit the Chromecast button. The device will switch on your TV if it’s off, change the input so that the TV displays that feed and start playing. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom is a rework of the Galaxy Camera from last year, and it’s based on the Galaxy S4 mini, rather than the Galaxy S III. While shooting photos may be one of the primary goals of the S4 zoom, the device is a proper smartphone.

It’s got a slightly bigger battery than the S4 mini – 2,330mAh vs. 1,900mAh – but the chipset is older, let’s see how that balances out. Read more »