The battery pack for the Nokia Lumia 1020 (codenamed EOS) has leaked again, this time with more photos that offer a much better look at the accessory. By the looks of it, the battery pack won’t add a lot of thickness – the 1,020mAh battery seems to be contained in the grip.

The grip has a nice rubbery-looking strip that should give you a rock solid hold on the Lumia 1020. Read more »

It was recently discovered that Android has had a major security hole since version 1.6, which allowed hackers to modify almost any Play Store app and turn it malicious without tripping the built-in security measures. Well, that hole has already been plugged and the fix has been sent out to OEMs (Google was made aware of the issue in February, so it has had time to fix it).

Google claims that it hasn’t seen any app from the Play Store (or other app stores for that matter) that have been affected by this vulnerability. Read more »

Over time Nokia phones have built up a reputation of being indestructible and Nokia reminds us of this with a cool video with pleasant music that describes the decidedly unpleasant process a phone has to go though.

“If testing shows a phone can be better, it’s back to the drawing board,” says the video. Here’s what testing includes. Read more »

The Nokia Lumia 1020 / 909 / EOS (there are competing reports of what it will actually be the final name) will launch on July 11 and go on sale as soon as August (or even this month) and now we’re even starting to see accessory leaks.

The first to leak is a battery pack that adds another 1,020mAh of juice, an extra 35% according to Izestia.ru. That would put the Lumia 1020 battery at around 2,900mAh as well as provide a very comfortable grip that will improve the EOS handling as a camera. Read more »

Barnes & Noble recently cut the prices of its Nook HD tablets in the UK, but the price cuts now got extended to the US too and Amazon is fighting back with price cuts of its own Fire HD tablets (again both in the UK and in the US).

In the US the 7″ B&N Nook HD costs $129 for the 8GB version and $149 for the 16GB version. In the UK the prices are £99 and £129 respectively. Read more »

Early benchmarks for the HTC Butterfly S are in and unsurprisingly it muscles the HTC One out of the way. It gives other flagships a run for their money too, topping several benchmarks and coming close to the top in the rest. And this is with early, unfinished software too.

The Butterfly S packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset with four Krait 300 CPU cores clocked at 1.9GHz, Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Those are the same specs as the Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4 and better than the HTC One (same chipset, but CPU is at 1.7GHz, GPU is probably clocked lower too). Read more »

Nokia has a long history of bringing innovative camera tech to the mobile phone market and it has prepared several videos celebrating that. Part of their success is due to its exclusive collaboration with Carl Zeiss (now just ZEISS), which is famous for precision instruments – Zeiss optics have won three technical Oscars according to one of the clips.

Nokia also pioneered the Optical Image Stabilization in mobile phones, which is the subject of another video. Read more »

Have an issue with your Samsung Galaxy S4? Samsung’s Consumer consultant guide is here to help with answers to 140 common questions.

The guide is split into two parts – the first troubleshoots issues with some of the advanced features of the Galaxy S4 (like teaching you to use Smart scroll properly), the second handles issues like Wi-Fi connection problems, failed updates and so on. Read more »

Nokia is planning a “Zoom, Reinvented” event for July 11, which will start 11AM in New York. The fun will start after dark though – a new invite has been sent out for the #ZoomParty, which starts at 7:30PM.

The party bears a new tagline too, “Zoom. Reinvented, after dark.” This is all in preparation for the Nokia Lumia 1020 / EOS launch. Read more »

London mayor Boris Johnson, Barnes & Noble and Evening Standard are organizing the Get Reading festival, which will be held in Trafalgar Square on June 13. To get you ready, B&N cut the prices of its Android-powered (with full Play Store access) Nook HD and HD+ tablets to £99 and £149 respectively.

If you prefer e-Ink, the Nook Simple Touch GlowLight (what a name, huh?) is currently at £69 (down from £109). The non-GlowLight model can be found for £29 here or here (a few other places too). Read more »

The Sony Xperia Honami is expected to be Sony’s foray back into the cameraphone business and leaked software gives us a peek of what to expect. XDA-Developers member krabappel2548 has ported the camera app to the Sony Xperia Z, Xperia ZL and Xperia Tablet Z.

The Sony Xperia Honami is expected to run on a Snapdragon 800 chipset and pack a 20MP camera that shoots 4K video, but the lesser sensors didn’t prevent the current crop of Xperia devices from running its camera software. Read more »

The International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) recognized a number of gadgets from the mobile world for pushing design forward. Nokia nabbed two Gold awards, HTC got one and so did the emergency SpareOne phone (that works on a single AA battery).

Nokia scored two gold awards, one for its Lumia range – specifically the Lumia 920, 820 and 620, the first batch of Nokia’s second-gen Lumias – and one for its overall colors and materials strategy. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is a the water resistant version of the regular S4 and just like it has a Snapdragon 600 chipset with the four Krait 300 cores clocked at 1.9GHz and a 2,600mAh battery.

But the two differ on one key factor for the battery test – the screen. AMOLED and LCDs both have their strengths and weaknesses, so let’s see which one does better when you draw the line. Read more »

An Android 4.3 build for the Samsung Galaxy S4 leaked a few days ago and it was found to contain some hidden enhancements that point the way to some new features in the future. They have to do with notifications.

The first is a Notifications screen, which acts as history of all your recent notifications, even the ones you’ve dismissed (those are the grayed out ones, the others are notifications still visible in the notification area). Read more »

Nokia put out a new ad for the Lumia 925 in the UK and it looks very, very similar to the Lumia 928 ad we saw some time ago. Seriously, it includes most of the same shots, even though the phones aren’t exactly identical.

Both phones boast great low-light photography thanks to their Optical Image Stabilization and optimized sensors. Still, the 928 has xenon flash, which the Lumia 925 does not. Read more »