One of the few exciting things we saw at CES this past January was the announcement of Nvidia’s new Android-running handheld gaming console codenamed SHIELD, powered by its new Tegra 4 chipset.

While not much has been heard of SHIELD or Tegra 4 since, a recently-spotted benchmark in AnTuTu reveals that the SoC is not only still alive and kicking, but has the potential to be a real contender when it comes to next generation mobile performance. Read more »

Intel has announced the next generation of its CPU architecture designed primarily for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, called Silvermont. Silvermont will be replacing the Saltwell CPUs that have been used in the recent Medfield, Clovertrail and Clovertrail+ SoC.

With Silvermont, Intel will be starting the same tick-tock cadence they use for their desktop processors. Silvermont is based on a 22nm architecture and will be succeeded by Airmont next year, which will be based on 14nm. Devices running Silvermont CPUs are expected this year, with tablets running the new Atom processors by the end of 2013. Read more »

The camera on the Samsung Galaxy S4 has been upgraded to 13 megapixels and the performance of the shooter has been more than impressive. The device’s camera has been used to shoot a music video of a Finnish metal band and the output is rather surprising.

A video released by the metal band Constantine, introducing its new album, reveals the shooting capabilities of the smartphone. The album might well be the first full-blown music video to be recorded on a mobile phone. Read more »

It looks like the days of paltry single-core CPUs powering the entry-level smartphones are nearing to an end. A brand new SoC by MediaTek is set to bring dual-core oomph to the lowest tiers of the smartphone realm.

The MediaTek MT6572 SoC supports dual-core Cortex-A7 CPUs, clocked at up to 1.2GHz. Read more »

Intel has provided additional details about it’s upcoming fourth generation of Core processors (codenamed Haswell) specifically related to the GPU that will be running in these chips. But most importantly, they have also announced a new brand of high-end integrated mobile GPUs called Intel Iris.

Intel Iris is the name of a new series of graphics processors that will be integrated into the upcoming Haswell processors. Mind you, not all integrated GPUs on the Haswell processors will be designated with the Iris name. Intel is reserving this name for only their highest performing mobile GPUs, which will be integrated into the top of the line Core i7 models. Read more »

Google started shipping the early developer version of the Google Glass to early adopters last month but the rest of us still don’t have much of an idea how the device is even operated. Thankfully, there is a new Google video which demonstrates just that.

In the Google Glass how-to video, you are told that the UI is made up of cards arranged horizontally, with the ones on the left being new. You scroll through the cards by swiping along the touch sensitive side of the Glass. When you want to select a card, you tap on the side; to go back, you swipe down. Read more »

Samsung has announced that it has started the production of ultra-high-speed 4Gb low power double data rate 3 (LPDDR3) mobile DRAM. The DRAMs are produced using a 20 nanometer process, which makes them ideal for high-end smartphones and tablets.

The upcoming 4Gb LPDDR3 mobile DRAM is said to enhance the performance when compared to the standard DRAM, which is used in the conventional computers. Read more »

The Mali-400 line of GPUs is getting a bit old but it isn’t going away yet – Chinese chip maker Amlogic announced a new chipset that packs an eight-core version of the GPU alongside a quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU clocked at the impressiev 2GHz.

The GPU offers a big increase over the theoretical performance of the Mali-400MP4 found in the likes of the Galaxy S III with 3,000Mpix/s fill rate (Amlogic numbers), though ARM only rates the GPU at 2,000Mpix/s (though that’s most likely at a lower frequency). Read more »

Last week, we saw Samsung Galaxy S4 going through a hard-to-watch scratch test and now it’s the turn of the HTC flagship smartphone to get the rough treatment.

The HTC One comes with the Corning Gorilla Glass 2 along with an aluminum uni-body design giving the smartphone a highly sophisticated look. But is the One durable and resistant to scratches? Well, the scratch tests, where the device under goes the knife, key and a hammer is here to show that. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a few surprises in store for those upgrading from the Galaxy S III. It uses a new NFC chipset, which doesn’t support the company’s older NFC tags, dubbed TecTiles. So if you’ve set up those around your crib keep in mind your new Galaxy S4 won’t be able to communicate with them.

Samsung has issued a statement that its new NFC tags, TecTiles 2, will be available in the coming weeks and will be compatible with older NFC-enabled devices. Read more »

Qualcomm’s most powerful platform to date is going to enter mass production this May. This was announced at a special event at Beijing by Yufei Wang, Qualcomm’s Senior Product Manager.

The Snapdragon 800 platform offers four Krait 400 processor cores that can be clocked up to 2.3GHz each. Those core can also maintain asynchronous clocks and thus save you some battery life. Read more »

Do you feel a sadistic pleasure every time you watch a scratch test video of a high-end smartphone? You’ll enjoy this, then.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the first device on the market to sport Corning Gorilla Glass 3 screen protection, which is supposed to be really tough. Well, someone’s decided to finally give it a proper test and has been kind enough to share the resulting video with the rest of us. Read more »

LG Display is estimated to receive some 30% of its business from tech giant Apple, and has recorded its weakest profit since Q2 of last year.

That’s why when the division posted its rather poor Q1 results, analysts suspected that the lower orders from the Cupertino giant it to blame. Many saw the slowing demand for Apple’s iPhone’s and iPad’s as the main reason for the shrinking profits. Read more »

The smartphone market is rapidly growing and according to the latest innovation, blind people will soon be able to receive SMS’s and emails on their smartphones, which automatically converts text into Braille patterns.

The smartphone for the blind will be based on an innovative touch screen that is capable of elevating and depressing to create readable text from the content it receives. Read more »

The iPhone 5S is yet to be seen in whole, but various alleged parts are already making the rounds on the Internet. The latest is a look at the front-facing camera of the next Apple phone, along with another unidentified component.

The photos of the components come from Japanese retailer Moumantai. The front-facing camera is compared against that of the current model, the iPhone 5. Read more »