RIM fessed up to being behind the “Wake up!” campaign in front of an Australian Apple store and now the company is moving on to step two of its plan – a motivational (and subtly anti-Apple) message that alludes to a new BlackBerry Bold.

Found on the site WakeUpBeBold.com, it consists of a crawling text and narration (complete with an Australian accent) and the sound of footsteps. Read more »

Rovio, a mobile gaming company famous for its Angry Birds franchise, published its financial results for the year 2011 and the numbers are quite interesting. Rovio reports 648 million downloads and 200 million active monthly users.

Keep in mind that we’re talking 2011 here, so that’s just the original Angry Birds, Seasons and Rio. The latest franchise, Angry Birds Space, only launched recently though it quickly became a hit as well. Read more »

You may or may not have already heard that Apple has geared its previous generation iPad – the iPad 2 – with a new processor. The chipset is still the same but the new core processor inside is built on the 32nm technology rather than the 45nm the original iPad 2 used. This isn’t news – it was uncovered a while ago along with the discovery that the new Apple TV uses such chips too.

What’s interesting however, is that today we saw one of the first reviews of this updated product and by the looks of it, the new chip manufacturing technology makes a special difference in the power efficiency department. Read more »

One of the big mysteries ahead of the Samsung Galaxy S III announcement was about its screen – will Samsung use a SuperAMOLED HD display similar to the one on the Galaxy Nexus or go the SuperAMOLED Plus route like the Galaxy Tab 7.7.

We got close enough to the S III to snap a macro shot, which quickly revealed that Samsung has chosen a PenTile matrix for its flagship droid. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S III not only launched with some impressive software features by Samsung, but it also comes with a couple of interesting third party offerings. Flipboard, a popular social-network aggregation app, is launching for Android exclusively on the S III (it will come to other devices later). The other feat is a roomy free online storage from Dropbox.

Flipboard rose to popularity as an iOS app, but S III owners will be the first droid users to enjoy the magazine-like format for social media and RSS feeds. Read more »

The battery test of the Samsung Galaxy Y Duos S6102 is done – it took some time, but the Y Duos is quite different from most other phones we’ve tested, both because it’s a dual-SIM phone and because it’s a fairly low-end Android.

We couldn’t run the video battery test as our standard test videos just wouldn’t work and a lower-res video wouldn’t make for a fair comparison. We doubt many people will be interested in watching a movie on a 3.14″ QVGA screen anyway. Read more »

Nokia released a new video shot with their 808 PureView monster of a cameraphone and it’s awesome. It’s a time-lapse video shot in South Africa and it really highlights the power of the creative mode feature – the mode that uses oversampling to improve quality and allow for lossless digital zoom.

Check out the video after the break, just make sure to view it in 1080p and in fullscreen so you can enjoy it in its full shine. Read more »

Samsung’s advertising has been pretty aggressive, especially against rival Apple. They even mocked the infamous long lines of people queuing to grab their next iGadget. Samsung Australia actually pulled a stunt where they offered Galaxy S II phones for $2 right outside of Apple’s store. So, when a video of a flashmob waiving signs and chanting “Wake up!” showed up in front of an Australian Apple store, everyone (including us) jumped to the assumption that it was the South Korean company that organized it.

Except now Samsung Australia is denying that they had anything to do with it. Read more »

Google is well-known for its doodles, but the search Easter eggs are where the real fun starts (e.g. tilt, do a barrel roll). The latest of those shows up when you Google “zerg rush”, which leads to your search results being attacked by a swarm of angry O-s.

It’s up to you to defend the search results – it’s not quite Starcraft but the APM counter surely woke up some forgotten old habits and I started clicking on the O-s like mad. Read more »

The Motorola RAZR MAXX topped our battery test charts, but Moto is keen to remind people that the MAXX is a champ in even more battery endurance disciplines – like GPS navigation, for example.

The RAZR MAXX went head to head with the iPhone 4S and the LG Spectrum. All three phones are on Verizon’s network (the MAXX and Spectrum are using LTE, while the 4S is on 3G) and are using VZ Navigator for the test. Read more »

Putting a smartphone on a helium balloon and having it fly high up in the sky has proven a popular pastime (there was even an iPad that braved the high altitudes), but it turns out serious scientist do it too as low-cost observation tools. The ASTRA project at South Hampton university has a thing for Windows Phone handsets and the latest was a Nokia Lumia 800.

As part of the ASTRA 10 series of flights, a Lumia 800 soared as high as 32km with nothing to help it face the cold or maintain connectivity. And conditions high up in the atmosphere are pretty rough. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Y Duos S6102 is a rare beast – an Android smartphone with two SIM card slots. Dual-SIM is typical feature phone territory and it’s nice to get a break from that – with smartphones continuing to gain popularity, there should be a niche for devices like the Y Duos.

Based on the very popular Galaxy Y, the Y Duos S6102 comes from good stock. It’s actually slightly upgraded over the original Y and it’s not just because of the two SIM cards. Read more »

The HTC One V just completed its final lap in our battery test course and we’re ready to share how the most affordable member of the One family did. It has a relatively small LCD screen and a single CPU core, so its 1500mAh battery should last longer than the slightly larger battery in the One S, which has a bigger AMOLED screen and two CPU cores to feed.

HTC haven’t listed any official battery life numbers on their site, so this is our first look at how long the One V lasts on a daily basis. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 I8160 doubles on a lot of the specs of its predecessor. For instance, the CPU has an extra core, there is a second camera on board, more than twice the number of pixels on a bigger screen, along with extra RAM, built-in storage and so on.

The Ace 2 dropped by our office and while it can’t stay long, we’ll have enough time for a preview (it’s a pre-production unit anyway). But first things first, it’s time for a quick hands-on video. Read more »

Well, it was a nice dream but it’s time for a wake up call – a representative from Samsung US contacted us and clarified that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 will have a dual-core processor and not a quad-core as yesterday’s rumor claimed.

Here’s what the company representative told us: “The US version of 10.1 tablet will still have a dual-core CPU and it’s still shipping on May 13th, with pre-orders starting on May 4th.” Read more »