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Wireless Charging Plate can charge both your Lumia and your toothbrush

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Wireless charging is slowly gaining traction with smartphone makers. But here’s an unexpected use – it can also help with your dental hygiene.

No, really – inquisitive Reddit user el_n00bo_loco decided to put his electric toothbrush on top of a Nokia Wireless Charging Plate (like the one we reviewed the other day). Read more »

Nokia puts 200 Lumia 820 units together to make an impressive video wall

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Nokia may have just snatched a Guinness record away from Sony – for the video wall made up of most smartphones. Using 200 Nokia Lumia 820 phones, Nokia Developer Champion Rudy Huyn created the installation and showcased it at the Microsoft BUILD conference. Sony’s wall was made up of 196 Xperia ZL phones.

The phones were arranged in 8 rows of 25 phones and were all controlled from a single Lumia phone. Together, they showed an animated display of live tiles for a selection of Windows Phone apps and also an interactive map with Bing Maps. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE-A runs circles around regular S4 with LTE in video download test

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The newly announced Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE-A packs a fast Snapdragon 800 chipset (early benchmarks look great) and an LTE-Advanced modem, allowing downloads of up to 150Mbps. That’s faster than the regular S4, but by how much? Samsung posted a video putting the two head to head to demonstrate the difference.

The tests were run in different locations and times of day. The two smartphones had to download different files – install an app from the Play Store or download a large video file. Read more »

Microsoft’s BUILD conference has started, watch the livestream here

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It’s been a busy month and it’s not over yet – Microsoft is kicking off its BUILD conference to talk about the future of Windows, Windows Server, Windows Azure, Visual Studio, and more. It should come as no surprise that Windows 8.1 will be a hot topic at the conference but there will be some Windows Phone talk too (about app development, not new features and certainly no GDR3 update).

The Day 1 keynote is minutes away from starting and you can watch it after the break. Read more »

Sony Developer World videos showcase the specs of the Xperia Z Ultra and SmartWatch 2

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We already saw a few promo videos for Sony’s new Xperia Z Ultra and SmartWatch 2, but the Sony Developer World also released videos. They are aimed at devs, which is good since they focus more on describing the features than on getting you to buy one.

The videos don’t really give out new information, but offer a good summary of the specs and clarify some things that weren’t 100% clear yesterday. Read more »

Highest-ever Skype video call made from Mount Everest using an HTC One, for charity

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Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, gets great reception. No really, it saw its first 3G video call in 2010, the first tweet in 2011 and now the first Skype video call in 2013. The feat was achieved by brit Daniel Hughes who is raising £1 million for the Comic Relief anti-poverty charity.

He wanted one million people to donate a single pound and decided to climb Everest to promote this charity. Read more »

iOS 7 will let you teach Siri how to properly pronounce people’s names

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Siri’s pronunciation isn’t always spot on, especially when it comes to names, which ranges from annoying to problematic. With iOS 7, however, Apple has made its digital assistant smarter, allowing you to teach it the current pronunciation without having to type in the phonetic spelling manually.

Siri will ask for help if it has troubles with a name or you can simply tell it it’s wrong – ” That’s not how you pronounce <a name>”. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy S4 Active rebuffs our attempts to put it in the sink, goes in front of our camera instead

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The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is one of the several Galaxy S4 variations but is the one (so far) that stays the closest to the original specs of the S4 flagship. And just like other S4 variations it brings something new to the table, an IP67 certification in this case.

What that means is that the Sony Xperia Z is no longer the only 5″ 1080p flagship that is waterproof. Who would have thought there would be competition among phones that can play the latest 3D games in full glory and then shoot video under water? Read more »

HTC may have just hired Robert Downey Jr. to promote its phones

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HTC has broken its bad streak with the HTC One and are looking to continue improving by stepping up marketing. How? By hiring Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr., to promote HTC’s phones.

Bloomberg reports that RDJ won’t be playing any of his famous characters, he will be himself, which is just as awesome (though admittedly Iron Man and the metal-clad HTC One would have gone well together). Read more »

Hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy NX Android-powered interchangeable lens camera

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At their Premiere event in New York Samsung gave us a chance to briefly check out their just announced Galaxy NX camera. We hurried over to where the camera itself was exhibited along with many NX mount lenses.

The benefit of having a choice of interchangeable lenses is one of the crucial advantages that the Galaxy NX has over last year’s Galaxy Camera and this year’s Galaxy S4 Zoom.

The other, of course, is the large APS-C sensor with a 20.3MP effective resolution. Physically, that translates into a sensor that’s much bigger than the sensor in any smartphone. Read more »

Samsung announces Galaxy NX, first Android-powered interchangeable lens camera with 20.3MP APS-C sensor

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Samsung just unveiled the first interchangeable lens camera that is powered by Android, the Samsung Galaxy NX. The device is a more advanced version of the Galaxy Camera with a much larger sensor and you get a choice of NX mount lenses.

The Galaxy NX uses an APS-C sensor with an effective resolution of 20.3MP. Besides high resolution stills, the camera can also record 1080p video at 25fps. The camera features DRIMe IV Image Signal Processer and can do burst shots at 8.6fps with a maximum shutter speed of up to 1/6000 sec. Read more »

Samsung to announce Ativ Book 9 Lite and Ativ One at the Galaxy & Ativ event this evening

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Samsung’s Galaxy & Ativ event in London will start in just a few hours and we already known what to expect from the Galaxy side. We’re getting teasing glimpses of what the Ativ line will bring – the Ativ One and Ativ Book.

Meanwhile, Samsung Indonesia jumped the gun and announced that the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Lite. Read more »

Nokia EOS unibody leaks again, this time in yellow

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Another day, another Nokia EOS leak. The body of the upcoming super phone from the Finns has leaked in a multitude of colors, and this time around it’s yellow. The large circular hole where the 41MP camera should go shows some of the internal structure of the EOS, but unfortunately there’s no camera.

By the way, the body seems to have been photographed on the exact same surface as the one from yesterday’s leak. This image doesn’t definitively resolve the question “polycarbonate or aluminum”, but along with the number of colors we have seen seems to weigh in favor of polycarbonate. Read more »

White polycarbonate body for the Nokia EOS photographed

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Aluminum or polycarbonate? It seems that Nokia can’t make up its mind – or the info from various tipsters is unreliable – as the Nokia EOS bodies out of both materials have been photographed.

The yet unannounced 41MP sharpshooter has leaked in Black, Red, Yellow, Silver and now in White too, except there’s no consensus of the unibody’s material. Read more »

First HTC Butterfly S promo video boasts big battery, HTC Zoe and BoomSound

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The HTC Butterfly S went official right on schedule and the first promo video is already out. The phone combines HTC’s two 1080p phones, the HTC Butterfly and HTC One, into a new flagship. It brings some of the duo’s best qualities, including the UltraPixel camera with Zoe, the BoomSound stereo speakers and quad-core performance.

The video highlights all these features, but starts off with the battery, which packs a whopping 3,200mAh. Read more »