Samsung announced that it has started mass production of 3GB RAM chips for mobile phones, after testing in late April. The chips are based on the LPDDR3 standard and are built on a 20nm process. The new chips offer better overall performance for future smartphones – potentially coming to the Galaxy Note III first.

The Note III is rumored to launch with 3GB RAM and should be unveiled in early September at IFA, so starting manufacturing of the new RAM chips now seems to be just in time. Young-Hyun Jun, executive VP at Samsung Electronics, said that the first devices with this RAM will be used in the second half of this year. Read more »

Samsung’s TouchWiz is loaded with ridiculous amounts of features (especially on the Galaxy S4), it took even us quite a while to find them all. Not that we’re complaining – as gadget geeks finding new toggles and buttons to play with is half the fun of a new phone. Yet, Samsung takes pity on those less tech inclined and posted a list of 10 features the Samsung Galaxy S4 has out of the box that you might have missed.

They range from “that’s nice, I guess” to genuinely useful features. Read more »

The Nokia Lumia 625 aims to bring a big screen and LTE connectivity on the cheap this September. The phone packs a 4.7″ WVGA screen (201ppi) with Nokia’s color profile and super sensitivity goodies, plus a 5MP / 1080p camera that features the Smart Camera app.

The first promo video focuses on these things and more. Read more »

In our preview of the Nokia Lumia 1020 we noticed that the camera produces photos with more saturated colors than the 808 PureView, which aimed for accurate, realistic colors. Damian Dinning – former Nokia camera guru, the man in charge of the 808 development and a fan of realistic colors in photos – says the change was made on purpose, to match the preference of the majority of users.

Juha Alakarhu, Dinning’s successor, joined in on the conversation as well. Read more »

The Amber update for Nokia Lumia phones will bring a number of нев features to current phones, including the Glance feature. What is Glance? It allows you to wake the phone with a double tap (a la MeeGo) and it displays the time and missed notifications.

It’s not an AMOLED-only feature, LCD-packing Lumias will get it too. They can leverage the Timed option, which switches off the display completely after a preset period of time. Read more »

The Android 4.3 system dump for the Nexus 4 from yesterday is still not perfectly ready for daily use, but it’s now much easier to install. You can follow instructions here to flash it (using any recovery) to your Nexus 4, it shouldn’t delete your data (once again, proceed at your own risk and do a backup for peace of mind).

Why would you risk it when the official update could be just days away? Android 4.3 brings few changes over 4.2.2, but they are important – and better performance is seemingly one of them. Read more »

The Nokia Tune (a.k.a. Grande Valse) is perhaps one of the most recognized ringtones around and every so often the Finnish company modernizes it. Now it’s time for a new update, the eighth in the 20 year history of the ringtone.

Along with the ringtone, Nokia has updated sounds for other notifications too – SMS, email, calendar, alarm and even the startup tone. Read more »

Android 4.3 cropped up on the Google Play Editions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One first but you shouldn’t doubt that the Nexus 4 will get it too. Some already have it – one Jeff Williams apparently bought a Nexus 4 from a Google employee and to his surprise the phone was running Android 4.3 JWR66N, the same build number we saw on the Galaxy S4 GPE.

With some help, he managed to get a system dump of the phone. There’s no radio and bootloader yet (Jeff promised to get those soon), but reports say you can use TWRP to restore the dump and get it to work. Proceed with caution (and full backup) as there’s no guarantee of the result. Read more »

The HTC One mini just went official and we were lucky enough to get to handle the new diminutive handset. The One mini takes the aluminum unibody, UltraPixel camera, BoomSound stereo speakers and Android 4.2.2 with Sense 5 of the regular One and compacts them into a smaller package with a 4.3″ 720p screen.

So, how much smaller is it? It’s 5mm shorter and 5mm narrower (about 0.2″ on a side) and lighter too – 122g vs. 143g for the big One. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the thickness. Read more »

Which is the most popular, Windows Phone handset you ask? The Nokia Lumia 520 is after raising from fifth place a month ago according to numbers by AdDuplex. The entry-level handset holds 13.3% of the worldwide WP market, ahead of the flagship Lumia 920′s 11.8% (the 925, 928 and 1020 are too new to have made a dent).

The climb of the modest Lumia 520 was rapid – it gained percentage points by the week. Meanwhile Windows Phone 7 devices are on the way out, but still make up a significant portion of the install base. Read more »

A lot of people were asking how the new Nokia Lumia 1020 stacks up against a DSLR. Unfortunately, the software on the 1020 isn’t fully complete yet so Nokia doesn’t allow samples to be published, so it’s early for a proper comparison. But it doesn’t hurt to take a peek – a quick comparison of photos on the device itself gives a preliminary answer.

After the unveiling, Nokia had set up a small lab with resolution charts so MyNokiaBlog was able to do the comparison of Lumia 1020 against a Canon 60D. Read more »

The Nokia Lumia 1020 is the new great hope of the Finns but like any other phone it might break and you might need to disassemble it. Or you could just be curious to see how the pros do it. Either way, the disassembly manual with step by step instructions and photos is worth a look.

All you need to take the Lumia 1020 apart is a “Nokia Standard toolkit version 2″. Failing that you can use a TORX+ screwdriver in several sizes, needle nose pliers and a plastic opening tool to pry open the smartphone. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition was met with a lot of excitement – one of the hottest official pure Android smartphones sent shivers down geeks’ spines. How has ripping out the TouchWiz mods affected the battery life? It brought it down as it turned out in our review.

Now, we know Nexus devices get a lot of jokes about battery life, but this isn’t technically a Nexus phone. Also, it was only the talk time that really changed, everything else seems to be as expected. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 launched with Android 4.1 instead of 4.2 like the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 did, but if you want you can flash a leaked version of the official 4.2.2 update. While the update is not rich with new features it reportedly makes the tablet smoother and improves battery life.

The bigger Note 10.1 (which launched with ICS) is still on Android 4.1, so the newer tablet will actually get ahead. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy NX is the third Android-powered digicam by Samsung and the first electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens (EVIL) camera to run Android. It is, in essence, a Galaxy Camera with a large APS-C sized sensor and lens mount.

The Galaxy NX promises to be the most versatile camera ever – Android gives it unmatched flexibility in terms of connectivity and sharing options and the large sensor and interchangeable lens combo is an all-round solution for different photography styles and shooting scenarios. Read more »