Nokia just announced it’s revamped Asha platform and the phone that leads the way – the Nokia Asha 501. The phone combines Lumia looks, MeeGo-like interface and a good balance between price ($99 before prices and subsidies) and features (plenty of social networking, including free access to Facebook without a data plan).

There’s going to be a single and a dual-SIM version of the phones and the first promo videos for both are out. But more interesting is the Fastlane video – it’s a feature that promises to show you the past, present and future. Read more »

The Ouya team has been posting shipping updates as promised (you need to be a backer to read those) and while there are still units waiting to head out to their owners, iFixit received one and – you guessed it – took it apart.

So, what exactly do you get for your $99? Well, two things – the console itself and a Bluetooth controller. Read more »

Sad that it’s been a while since Vertu put out a phone? Well, you can try a 24K gold BlackBerry Q10 instead. It comes from Goldgenie, which has a history of turning BlackBerrys into gold (Apple products too).

Anyway, the BlackBerry Q10 has a 24K gold-plated bezel and a 24K gold panel below the QWERTY keyboard. All other specs of the phone remain the same, except that the packaging has been upgraded to a snazzy wooden box. And it’s heavier, but Goldgenie gives no concrete numbers about that. Read more »

Phablets are heating up and a relatively unknown Chinese maker Vivo wants in. Yesterday it announced the Vivo Play with a 5.7″ 1080p display and a quad-core Snapdragon 600 chipset. Unlike most unknown Chinese markers, Vivo isn’t trying to sell its device for a low price – it’s asking 2,998 yuan ($490) for it.

The Vivo Play certainly has an impressive set of specs – the 5.7″ 1080p (386ppi) screen obviously, but also Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean running on Snapdragon 600 clocked at 1.7GHz with 2GB of RAM (same chipset as the HTC One). Annoyingly it won’t leave Android pure but will saddle it with “Fun-touch” UI that has an iOS-like flat structure. Read more »

A number of Tegra 4 powered devices were discovered in AnTuTu benchmark results, including a Toshiba tablet. Now we’re getting a better look of that tablet thanks to photos sent to Techblog.gr.

The tablet runs Android 4.2.1 and is powered by four Cortex-A15 CPU cores clocked at 1.8GHz. The Tegra 4 chipset also packs a fifth power-saver core. Read more »

I remember when I first installed Doom 3 on my computer in 2004 – it struggled at even the lowest resolution. Now we have a Doom 3 port for Android phones, because that’s how far smartphone performance has gone.

Doom 3, like many other id Software games, got open sourced, which allowed the creation of many ports, including this one. The dev behind this one is the same that brought the Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Quake III ports. Read more »

It looks like both HP and Toshiba are working on devices powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 chipset. HP has two – a tablet and an All-in-One computer – and Toshiba has at least one tablet (that we know of). The trio was discovered in AnTuTu benchmarks.

The HP tablet is called HP SlateBook 10 X2 and packs a 10” screen with FullHD resolution. It ran Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean at the time of benchmarking. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Camera is so far unique in Samsung’s lineup and quite a rare beast in general – an Android-powered camera (especially if you don’t count the once that get announced but never make it to the market). It may not be lonely for long though, the Bluetooth SIG has certified a Samsung GN120 Galaxy Camera device.

The current Galaxy Camera has two versions – GC100 with mobile connectivity and the GC110, which is Wi-Fi only. Notice it’s GC, while the new device is GN. Read more »

We eagerly await each Google I/O as it usually brings some exciting new development for Android and Google’s other projects. Except this year things will probably be different – the schedule is out and it shows that the keynotes that usually span two days have been cut down to a single 3 hour session.

Last year at Google I/O was announced along with Google Glass and the ill fated Nexus Q. Read more »

In our line of work, we get to see a lot of spy shots of yet to be announced devices and sometimes those turn out to be complete fakes. Now we get a rare glimpse of the other side – what it takes to create a convincing fake.

The fake in question is an iPhone concept based on a patent filed by Apple, which showcases an unusual design with a wraparound display. These images were sent to us by someone named Fredrick Proll. Read more »

The Mali-400 line of GPUs is getting a bit old but it isn’t going away yet – Chinese chip maker Amlogic announced a new chipset that packs an eight-core version of the GPU alongside a quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU clocked at the impressiev 2GHz.

The GPU offers a big increase over the theoretical performance of the Mali-400MP4 found in the likes of the Galaxy S III with 3,000Mpix/s fill rate (Amlogic numbers), though ARM only rates the GPU at 2,000Mpix/s (though that’s most likely at a lower frequency). Read more »

BlackBerry partnered with the Selfridges chain of stores in the UK for an exclusive early launch of its QWERTY-packing BlackBerry Q10 and it’s been a hit. The stores reported that its initial stock ran out in 2 hours, a record for tech items in the store.

The Q10 launched in Selfridges stores last Friday, April 26, ahead of the general April 30 launch. Read more »

Is it me or is Nokia’s Beta Labs the most important part of the company? The Labs team constantly churns out Nokia-exclusive apps and features in a bid for your attention. The latest is a beta version of Nokia Chat for Windows Phone 8.

Chat is not a new service – it’s been around Symbian and Series 40 (including Asha) for a while now. Now Windows Phone powered Lumia phones get to join in on the discussion, too. Read more »

BlackBerry’s Q10 QWERTY messenger will launch very soon and the BlackBerry World app store will greet it with a good selection of messengers (obviously, aside from BBM). This includes arguably the two biggest names in the game, Skype and WhatsApp.

Skype will be available for the BlackBerry Q10 at launch, or at least in Canada (where the phone hits the shelves on May 1). Read more »

Yesterday saw the launch of the first two Firefox OS phones, the Keon and Peak from GeeksPhone. There were some questions just how much demand there will be for yet another OS on the market and if this launch is any indication, the answer is “enough.”

The stock of the two phones ran out just a few hours after they went on sale yesterday, though the numbers sold were not announced. Still, much like other GeeksPhone handsets, these are primarily oriented towards devs, so even if there weren’t that many phones at least it shows good developer interest. Read more »