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The HTC One X falls into our laps, we test its metal

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Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chipset has been making waves in the Android world and with an ever increasing number of tablets adopting the quad-core SoC, it was only a matter of time before smartphones joined the fray too.

HTC One X surrounded by the current rival leaders

The HTC One X is taking center stage as the Taiwanese company’s new flagship for 2012 and we go hands-on to see what it has to offer besides being the first quad-core smartphone to market. Read more »

HTC One X gets tossed from 12,000 feet for marketing purposes

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At a time when creativity in advertising gets bolder by the hour, impressive commercials have become tough to come by. HTC however, have managed to pull one off. The company’s One X flagship commercial was shot at an altitude of 12,000 feet, with the smartphone doing fashion photography in the process.

The commercial has taken the impressive 35 skydives to be completed. Read more »

Meizu releases official Ice Cream Sandwich beta update for the MX and M9

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Meizu MX and M9 owners, rejoice, for Meizu has launched its official beta update to Ice Cream Sandwich for you.

After just a month of beta testing, the Ice Cream Sandwich public beta release is live and Meizu urges the MX and M9 users to give it a go. Read more »

Camera speed comparison: HTC One X vs Sony Xperia S vs Samsung Galaxy Nexus

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When HTC announced their One X flagship smartphone at the MWC in February, it made a pretty big deal of its camera. A couple of the features that got most attention were its ability to shoot 4 full-resolution frames per second up to 99 shots and go from locked stat to taking a picture in just 0.7 seconds.

There’s no denying this sounds impressive, but experience has thought us to take PR talk a pinch of salt and believe nothing until it’s properly tested. Luckily, tech blog SoyaCincau helped us with that, pitting the One X camera against those of the Sony Xperia S and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and filming the whole thing. Their findings were quite interesting, so we suggest you check them out. Read more »

Beam me up, Scotty: Samsung I8530 Galaxy Beam teleports in our office

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There’s no arguing the Samsung I8530 Galaxy Beam is a pretty unique smartphone. In short, it’s a Galaxy R with a twist – a dual-core Android Gingerbread phone, with a 4.0 WVGA LCD screen and a 5MP camera. What turns heads though is the built-in projector – the Galaxy Beam is a pocketable movie theater or business presentation, depending on your needs.

We had some time to play with the Galaxy Beam and, as you could imagine, we dedicated most of it on the projector. Read more »

HTC launches an inspiring ad campaign to promote the One X smartphone

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After touching our techie brains with the video on how much effort is put into the production of the One S, now HTC wants to touch our hearts with their latest One X ad video.

The inspiring video, despite not showing the One X all that often, makes you feel a bit more special than usual. But will that help HTC boost the sales of their hotly launched One line-up? Check the video out and decide for yourselves. Read more »

Amazon Appstore hits version 2.3, fixes notification issue

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One of the most popular alternatives to the Google Play Store, the Amazon Appstore just got an update, bringing its version number to 2.3. Raising the initial download file size cap from 20MB to 50MB, the Amazon Appstore now matches what the original Android app repository has to offer.

Unfortunately, the Amazon store still has no support for secondary downloads – a feature which allows the Play Store to host apps up to 4GB in total size. On the other hand, the update finally solves the issue, where update notifications will pop up even if you have disabled the feature. Read more »

Transformer Prime update rolling out, still no face unlock

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The latest firmware update has gone live, although the listed ICS version still remains Android 4.0.3.

Those of us expecting to take advantage of Android’s face unlock feature, however, will have to play the waiting game a bit longer. ASUS has assured us that it is working on adding the feature, so hopefully we’ll see that included in an another update soon. Read more »

Google to sell co-branded Android tablets, says WSJ

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We have been hearing rumors about Google planning to get serious about the tablet segment by launching its own branded Android tablet this year. Eric Schmidt himself said a few months ago that Google plans to bring a tablet of the highest quality to the market in the next six months.

The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Google will be selling co-branded tablets on its own online store, just like it used to with the original Nexus One. This is an interesting move because if you remember, Google had to shut down that service and move to retail-store only as it wasn’t working out well. Read more »

Google celebrates 50 billion km mark in Maps navigation, updates Android version

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Here comes an impressive milestone for you. Google Maps for Android has provided 50 billion kilometers of turn-by-turn navigation to its users. Quick calculations show that this is the distance you would cover if you traveled to the Sun and back 334 times.

To celebrate the occasion, Google has released Google Maps 6.5 for Android with a refreshed UI look and feel. The home screen in the Navigation part of the app is completely redesigned for Android 4.0+ devices and features a more intuitive and easier to use interface. Read more »

Face unlock for Samsung Galaxy S requires blinking, is better than ICS face unlock

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After some hesitation, Samsung is finally delivering the promised Value pack update for the original Galaxy S. The new firmware adds some Ice Cream Sandwich features to the Gingerbread-tasting Galaxy, including Face unlock.

It turns out, though, the Face unlock is actually better than the one present in the stock Android ICS, which is easy to bypass with a photo. Samsung’s team responsible for the value pack heard those concerns and made this unlock option more secure. Read more »

Samsung I9300 M to come with eye-tracking and auto-dial?

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Yesterday we first heard the Samsung I9300 might be called Galaxy M and belong to the mid-range and now we already got our first glance of its specs. The new rumors have little facts to back them up, so you probably shouldn’t bet the farm on them coming up true, but they are more exciting enough to be worth checking out.

According to our source, the device might even drop the Galaxy branding and go by Samsung M. What’s more interesting, though, are few neat little tricks up its sleeve, including eye-monitoring feature, which will keep the display turned on if it recognizes you are looking at it. Read more »

Kindle Fire 6.3 update brings loads of new features

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Amazon has pushed the 6.3 update to Kindle Fire. One of the new features that have been added is the ability to share the contents of the book that you’re reading. Users can highlight a particular passage from a book and then share it on a social network of their choice, without having to leave the book. These passages will also be available to other Kindle readers reading the same book.

Another new feature is Book Extras. It provides the user with additional content on a particular book, such as description of the characters, information on the author, etc. and is powered by the community driven book encyclopedia called Shelfari. Think of it as the special features in a DVD, but for your ebooks. Read more »

HTC Vivid for AT&T showed off its Android ICS update, here’s the video

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The LTE sporting HTC Vivid for AT&T is the first handset from the Taiwanese company’s U.S. lineup to get an update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The older HTC Sense 3.0 got a bump as well – its version is now 3.6.

Quite naturally, we were curious to put the HTC take on Google’s latest OS through its paces. After all, the HTC Sense 3.6 flavored Android 4.0 ICS will find its way (it actually is already in some parts of the world) to the company’s dual-core Android lineup from last year. Therefore, if you happen to own a member of the aforementioned group of devices, read on to get an idea what will your phone’s interface look like after the major OS update. Read more »

Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi gets Android 4.0.4 update, beats everyone to it

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After getting Ice Cream Sandwich in the beginning of the year, the Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi has now beat everyone to the chase, even Google’s own Galaxy Nexus, and has starting to receive an update to Android 4.04.

That being said, the update is incremental and doesn’t bring major new features, rather small bugfixes and enhancements. Read more »