Yet another Android smartphone joined our review queue and here we are, rushing to give you some quick first impressions of it to give you an idea of what to expect. The Huawei U8850 Vision is a mid-range Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread smartphone that comes with surprisingly sophisticated design for its price.

You probably noticed that the back of the Huawei U8850 Vision is really reminiscent of some HTC smartphones, but you may be surprised to know that Huawei also matched their Taiwanese rivals for build quality and feel of the materials used. Read more »

One of the beauties of the open and free nature of Android is that it allows the creation of very affordable devices. The Chinese manufacturer MIPS technology seized this opportunity and created the NOVO7 – a 7″ Ice Cream Sandwich slate that only costs $99.

With its 1GHz single-core CPU and 444 MHz GPU (of unknown kind), the NOVO7 will hardly be a benchmark champion, but that’s hardly its purpose. What matters is that it comes with a capacitive touchscreen (most ultra-cheap slates still use resistive screens), and can play all kinds of video formats up to 1080p resolution. Read more »

Google and Australian telecommunications company Telstra have joined forces to launch the world’s first store dedicated to Android. Called the Androidland, it’s not just a place to buy Android devices but also where you can experience all the different features in the OS and just enjoy yourself.

There is a lot to do in this Android-themed store, decked in the traditional Android green color. You can play Angry Birds on a giant touchscreen display, Androidify yourself or check out the world on a massive display using Google Earth. They have even gone as far as to have a gingerbread scent in the store and a grass scent where there is grass. And then of course, you have handsets from all the major manufacturers, which you can try out for yourself. Read more »

The mythical creature known as the Verizon Galaxy Nexus has been spotted in the wild and much to the surprise of its spotters was found running some Verizon apps. As you may know, the Nexus phones have been known to come with a stock ROM from Google with nothing but Google’s own applications installed. The Galaxy Nexus will be the first to break this tradition and have some bloatware courtesy of Verizon, tarnishing the name of the Nexus brand forever.

It’s not all bad news, however. If you may recall, Ice Cream Sandwich comes with the ability to disable unwanted applications from the Settings menu. Read more »

Ever since Google announced the Galaxy Nexus and along with it Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, those of us with a Nexus S have been salivating at the chance of getting it on our own devices. Unfortunately, Google did not give any official date as to when the update will be made available for download.

It seems now, however, that it won’t be too long now. A Google employee posted on Google+ that he got the Ice Cream Sandwich on his Nexus S and that ‘it’s looking great’. The update was later on deleted from the site but you can see a screenshot below. Read more »

Philips has not had much of a success in the mobile phone segment. Many people don’t even know that they exist in this segment and you can’t really blame them for that. Philips mobile phones so far have been mediocre at best and if you see one you wouldn’t even remember its name in T-minus 1 minute.

Now, however, they have launched a new Android smartphone that is likely to stay in your memory for a bit longer. Say hello to the Philips W920. Read more »

It’s been a while since we got a taste of an LG flagship, so we were more than curious to spend some quality time with the company’s freshly launched Nitro HD for AT&T Wireless. As the highlight of its top of the line spec sheet, the LTE rocking smartphone boasts an award winning, 4.5″ AH-IPS LCD screen with HD (720×1280 pixels) resolution – more than enough to spark our interest.

Now on with the specs. Along with its state of the art display, the LG Nitro HD packs a Read more »

If you thought only the iPhone has over-heating battery issues then here’s something to take you out of your state of delusion. A Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket managed to get its battery so hot that it ended up melting the battery contacts.

As reported by the owners’s friend on xda-developers forum, he heard a sound, felt a burning sensation on his leg and as he pulled the phone out he could smell something burning. Read more »

Get your studs out and put your favourite kit on, because FIFA 12 comes out today on the Android Market, assuming you own a PLAY that is.

Yesterday we spoke with EA Mobile’s Andrei Lazarescu and Alexandru Ruse alongside Sony Ericsson’s Tim Harrison (Head of Content and Marketing) to talk not only about the latest iteration of FIFA, but the PLAY as a mobile gaming device and its place in the mobile market as it is today, 8 months on from launch. Read more »

The Huawei U8860 Honor is probably the biggest mystery of all the smartphones that have come to our office. Not only is Huawei still to make a proper name for itself as a smartphone manufacturer, but the Honor also comes with a custom UI that we saw for the first time.

As it turns out, the interface is pretty nice and the Honor has enough power to run it smoothly. It’s not perfect, but perfect doesn’t really live in this price range. And as you’ll see from the video in a bit, the Honor is not only a solid smartphone, but it also has plenty of tricks up its sleeve. Read more »

Without a doubt there’s more than meets the eye in the latest version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, which is due to hit a handful of smartphones in the coming months.

Except the code optimizations and plethora of new features, below the creamy surface of Android 4.0 Google developers have had some fun. What’s more, they want you to have fun, too! Read more »

The story of the Samsung Galaxy S II for Vodafone UK and their GPS issues came to a happy ending as the carrier quickly found the cause and issued a fix. The customized firmware that was distributed with the Galaxy S II on Vodafone had some bugs that caused the GPS inside the smartphone to hunt forever before it acquires a lock (if it manages to do so at all).

Vodafone acknowledged the issue last week and yesterday released a fix that should get rid of the problem. Read more »

Box.net is getting pretty aggressive – after the recent Sony Ericsson deal, now LG are getting 50GB of free cloud storage too. Owners of Android-running LGs who install Box on their phones between November 30 2011 and March 31 2012 will get the extra storage for free (50GB up from the usual free 5GB).

It’s not a limited time offer either, like the HTC/Dropbox offer. You get to keep your 50 gigs for as long as you have the account. There’s still some fine print though. Read more »

As if we didn’t have enough benchmarks on Android to begin with, here comes another one. Futuremark, makers of the popular 3DMark benchmark for PCs, have announced that they will be making a version for Android.

According to the press release, it seems 3DMark for Android will be targeted mostly towards the Android tablets and will help gauge their gaming performance. Read more »

Samsung software engineers finally managed to fix the volume control bug that was plaguing the company’s Galaxy Nexus Android flagship. The Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone tended to readjust its volume on its own when it was connected to a 2G network operating at 900 MHz frequency.

Now we can all turn our backs to this issue as the fix is rolling out over the air. Samsung has also resumed the shipping of the Galaxy Nexus and the new batches that arrive at retailers are reportedly running the fixed firmware. Read more »