It feels like it was yesterday that we saw the Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus official announcement and we are already welcoming it to our office. Oh wait – the announcement really was yesterday, which makes us especially glad to introduce this one to you.

The Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus has some pretty big shoes to fill as its predecessor is one of the most successful products that the Koreans released in 2011. You don’t need to look much further than our own specs page to see that the original Galaxy Ace has been enjoying tremendous interest, so the Ace Plus needs to be quite an upgrade. Read more »

I’ve been using the Nokia N9 for a while now and I’m totally awed by the user experience. Now I regularly find myself swiping other touch phones with the intention of dismissing program screens and whatnot. Yeah, I’m surprised at myself too. I’m an old dog that doesn’t like to learn new tricks but this whole swiping thing on MeeGo, it totally got me. Yes, the Nokia N9 grew on me. Big time.

It’s really a sad thing that the N9 might just be the last MeeGo handset and that it comes with this OS that hardly has any developers appeal or even future. If you are not happy about the available out-of-the-box apps on the N9, you can safely call it a day. There’s no “eventually” in the possibility of getting a wider variety. And although Nokia has worked hard to deliver the modern-day basics such as Facebook, Skype and Angry Birds (who plays that anymore?), there are still apps that I do miss from iOS and Android. But I digress. Read more »

The last battery test of the year is really something special. Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a key device for both Samsung and Android and as such there was no way it could avoid being subjected to our traditional battery test.

So far, smartphones with HD displays have really struggled to get good grades in our test – the LG Nitro HD is the worst performer so far and the HTC Rezound is just above it in the leaderboard. The Samsung Galaxy Note did manage to put in a pretty good performance despite its HD screen, but that one had a huge 2500 mAh battery. Read more »

BlackBerry is the last of the major platforms to get a representative in our battery test. The BlackBerry Curve 9380 did the rounds at our battery test and we were as curious as you to find more about the BlackBerry OS 7 energy efficiency.

The BlackBerry Curve 9380 comes with a 3.2″ screen of HVGA+ resolution, which should really take much less juice to run than the displays of any of the other smartphones we have tested. However, RIM only managed to squeeze a 1230 mAh battery inside the little fella, so we probably shouldn’t expect miracles here. Read more »

We’ve are done with the battery testing of yet another smartphone. The Sony Ericsson neo V might just be an emergency substitute for the injured star player, but that doesn’t mean it can get away with anything here.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V 3.7″ WVGA LCD screen is coupled with a 1500 mAh battery, which led us to expect a performance somewhere around the middle of the pack. As it turned out later, the neo V exceeded our expectations and turned out one of the better performers we have seen. Read more »

We got yet another high-end Android smartphone to complete our battery test trials. The Meizu MX came up as a large unknown to our office, but quickly started earning fans among the team and completed our review as one of the very decent droids out there.

With a 1600 mAh battery and a 4″ screen with a resolution of 960 x 640 pixels, we were expecting a result somewhere in the middle of the pack and that’s about what we got from the MX. Read more »

Action Movie FX is a relatively new mobile app that allows you to add cinema-grade special effects to your own footage. It’s not about a new iMovie app for post-processing, instead, you choose a single special effect, you go shoot a short clip and the app adds its magic onto it.

The result… Well, it varies. I’ve had some really nice time experimenting with it and once you get how the effects work, you can get some really good footage.

The most impressive thing of it all is how real these explosions look bearing in mind the whole thing has been rendered on a mobile phone. Geez, you will be amazed. Read more »

The first ever released Curve with a touchscreen has made it to our office. The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the latest RIM smartphone running on the OS 7. It’s quite similar with the Torch 9860, but comes with a smaller and low-res display.

The Curve 9380 packs a less-capable 800MHz processor, but offers variety of connectivity options – 3G with HSPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and even NFC. The camera is 5 megapixel fixed focus one and is capable of capturing VGA videos. Read more »

We are no strangers with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. The first time it graced us with its presence was just for too short and we couldn’t fully test it in the usual GSMArena fashion.

Now though, this 7.0-inch Android tablet from Samsung is here to stay and we are ready to get down to business. Read more »

It’s finally here, folks – the droid you have all been looking for has finally arrived at our doorstep. We’ve obviously been very good this year as Santa sent us the most amazing Christmas gift in the face of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (in fact he sent us two of those).

We’ve already rolled up our sleeves and started inspecting the Android Ice Cream Sandwich flagship and we hope to be back with the answers of all your questions sometimes next week. Read more »

As an LTE packing, dual-core smartphone, we did not have any high expectations regarding the battery performance of the HTC Vivid. The device is powered by a relatively modest 1620mAh battery, which has a lot to deal with.

As always, we will begin our Read more »

The top of the Asha line, the Nokia Asha 303, walked into our office to tell us about its 1GHz processor. We asked it about multitasking, but it quickly changed the subject by yelling “I have Angry Birds!”.

The 303 has several things that elevate it above the majority of other feature phones – from the fast processor, through a capacitive touchscreen and QWERTY to Wi-Fi connectivity and 3G with HSDPA. Read more »

Yet another high-end phone appeared at our doorstep today. The LG Optimus LTE SU6200 is the pioneer of the company’s brand new AH-IPS display, which aims to challenge the best on the market.

As usual on such occasions we thought you might be interested in seeing a quick hands-on video garnished with our first impressions of the smartphone. Read more »

The U.S. version of the hottest Android smartphone of the year made it in front of our camera, folks. The Verizon Wireless exclusive (at least for the time being) Samsung Galaxy Nexus is practically identical to its GSM sibling, save for the CDMA/LTE radio on board.

The smartphone features a Read more »

The third member of AT&T’s rather impressive LTE lineup made it to our office. The HTC Vivid surely has presence – even when dressed in a stealthy black color scheme. With a massive 4.5″ screen and a solid metal back, the smartphone cannot help but be noticed.

Now on with a look at the spec sheet. The HTC Vivid packs Read more »