BlackBerry’s BBM messaging platform has leaked for Android today on the XDA Developers forums. The app itself, while functioning, is pretty much useless as it fails to register with BBM servers and thus still doesn’t do anything.

The app is reported to currently be able of running only on whitelisted devices, which we presume are dev units inside the BlackBerry HQ. Read more »

Jolla just announced that its Sailfish OS has reached two-fold compatibility with Android – it can run Android apps but also the OS itself can run on Android phones. This is major news as it solves the two big problems facing any upstart OS – it’s difficult to get hardware manufacturers to make devices for it and difficult to get devs to make apps for it.

By the looks of it, if a maker wishes to have a spin, it could put Sailfish on a phone or tablet that was designed with Android in mind. Read more »

Amazon seems to be close to announcing the next generation models of their Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD tablets as the leaks and rumors are slowly gathering steam. We have heard a few things about the Kindle Fire HD in the past, including some leaked benchmark scores that pointed towards a Snapdragon 800 SoC and 2560×1600 resolution display.

Now, evleaks has leaked a new press image of what looks like the standard Kindle Fire model. The design is slightly changed compared to the current model, mostly with respect to the bezel around the display. The current model has thinner bezels along the top and sides of the display and thicker one at the bottom when held in portrait mode. The new one has equally thick bezels surrounding the display. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 made its way officially to the United States, so we managed to spend some quality time with the market-specific version of the phablet. The gigantic handset is offered by AT&T for $149.99 with a two-year commitment.

Sold under the model name SGH-I527, the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 for AT&T sports the same hardware as its internationally available GT-I9200 sibling. Read more »

Sony officially announced its latest flagship, the Xperia Z1 at the recently concluded IFA trade show in Berlin. The cameraphone is yet to launch globally, but it looks like someone has managed to grab a unit and even give it a teardown treatment.

The disassembled images of the Xperia Z1 show that the smartphone sports a back cover that is quite similar to the Xperia Z. Read more »

Sharp is yet to announce the AQUOS SHL23 in Japan but someone has managed to get their hands on a device and run some benchmarks. And not only did the device run them well but also managed to top the charts.

What we have here is the benchmark score from Basemark X, which is a gruelling GPU benchmark for mobile devices. The AQUOS SHL23 running the Snapdragon 800 processor blazed straight to the top of the chart with a score of 13.1, narrowly beating the LG G2 that runs on the same processor. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is finally here and boy are we excited. It’s the best thing to happen digital notepads in recent times and something of an Android icon in the making.

If you’re up to date with your smartphone news the Galaxy Note 3 is a pretty huge deal and currently the very best Samsung can offer. It’s the first smartphone to bring 3 GB of RAM and microUSB 3.0 to the table, rocks the latest and greatest in computing power thanks to the Snapdragon 800 and Exynos 5 Octa chipset selection, and is one hell of a productivity tool. Read more »

Now that you’ve taken a sneak peak at our Sony Xperia Z1 still camera, it’s time to treat yourself to some video samples. As you’d imagine, the 20.7MP Exmor RS camera doesn’t break a sweat at shooting 1080p videos. In fact we were slightly disappointed to find out that those 4K recording rumors didn’t pan out, but there are not a lot of screens that support that yet, so it’s unclear how big a loss that is.

Sony has updated its camera software to suit the larger, 1/2.3″ image sensor and allows you to shoot videos in Superior, Manual and HDR modes (among others). We’ve given these three a go and here are the results. Read more »

If you’ve been following us on Facebook today, you know that we have the Sony Xperia Z1 (as well as another high roller, but we’ll talk about it later) on the premises. The 20.7MP camera that the Z1 boasts was making headlines long before the phone itself was made official at the IFA.

Sony promises the Xperia Z1 is Android’s worthy answer to the Nokia Lumia 1020 and its 41MP PureView sensor. We are yet to get answer this, but for now we are hard at work on the Z1′s preview. Don’t worry, the review is coming shortly, too. Read more »

Twitter started its own Google Play beta testing campaign and now the handful of people that registered for the early beta releases on Google+ (now closed) can get to experience the latest version of its Android app.

The latest release – Twitter 5.0 beta for Android brings a significant (and welcome) UI overhaul that changes the fixed clickable tabs for swipeable ones that you can rearrange through the side-accessible menu. Read more »

Sony is trying to bring out your inner Gordon Ramsey with a special edition of the Xperia Tablet Z – the Kitchen Edition. Yep, you read that right – the water-resistant tablet isn’t afraid of the kitchen environment that usually holds many dangers for an electronic device.

So, what sets the Xperia Tablet Z Kitchen Edition from the regular edition? Read more »

Intel has been trying to get into the mobile business and has had moderate success so far, but with the new Bay Trail chipset the chip giant may have finally done it. Bay Trail chips will use the new Silvermont CPU cores and Intel’s own GPUs like the ones used in Haswell processors.

Bay Trail will be under the Atom brand for tablets (Z3600 for dual-core CPUs, Z3700 for quad-core) and Celeron and Pentium for laptops (N2000 and N3000 respectively) and desktops (J1000 and J2000). Read more »

Following the successful treatment it gave the original, DODOcase launched its line of locally handcrafted covers for the 2013 ASUS Nexus 7. The San-Francisco based designer and maker of bookbound cases has an entire collection on offer for the second generation of the most popular slate in the Android realm.

I managed to spend some quality time with the DODOcase Color Block for the new Nexus 7. Inspired by the artist journals from the past, the cover offers a fresh take with a classic twist on the tablet case concept. Read more »

While the launch of the new Sony Xperia Z1 flagship is still a week away in most markets, some enthusiastic early developers in China have already figured out a way to gain root access to the device.

The process is surprisingly simple and involves using the tool found at 360-Root, connecting your Xperia Z1 via USB, and clicking the ‘Root’ button. The tool is all in Chinese, but you can’t really get it wrong. Read more »

Three companies, three approaches to the “best camera” – Nokia uses a huge sensors with a staggering amount of pixels, HTC used fewer, but bigger pixels and Sony settled for something in between. So, how did it work out for the Japanese company?

A shootout coming from Vietnam tries to provide an answer by pitting Sony’s new hotness, the Xperia Z1, against the Nokia 808 PureView and the HTC One mini. Read more »