HTC confirmed it is working on a new HTC Sync app that will be able to import data from iPhone backups to the upcoming HTC One flagship.

It’s still unclear if this process will work on other (or older) HTC handsets as well. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 is one of the few smartphones with IP67 rating – it combines simple durability and advanced functions, so it needs to prove its endurance both when trekking in the wilderness, but also when enjoying modern conveniences like browsing the web.

A 1,700mAh battery is on the low side of what we would have imagined for a phone that’s likely to spend a lot of time away from an electricity socket, but let’s see if the Xcover 2 can counter the limited capacity with efficiency. Read more »

The BlackBerry Z10 has serious ambitions to become the business phone, but there’s one major requirement – it should be able to last during long hours spent at the office or traveling between meetings.

With a 1,800mAh capacity the Z10 battery isn’t the biggest around, but it has an OS designed just for it at the moment (unlike Android that runs on many different devices with many different chipsets). Read more »

Sony is traditionally very tight-lipped about what kind of tough glass it uses on its smartphones, but during a press conference in Hong Kong the proverbial beans might have been spilled, at least as far as the Sony Xperia Z goes.

And the answer seems pretty weird – Sony uses two different materials from two suppliers for the front and the back glass of the device. Read more »

If you’ve missed the HTC One unveiling yesterday or just want to relive the excitement now is your chance. HTC has released a video of the event in London, for everyone interested to check out.

And if you don’t have that much time, HTC has prepared a much shorter version, containing only the highlights. Read more »

Viber is one of the most popular instant messaging services with more than 140 million users. The application which also offers free calling and saves you few bucks off your phone bill has been updated with few minor improvements.

Viber 2.3 update had earlier enhanced the messaging experience with new interface and sounds. The earlier update allowed you to share stickers with your friends and makes messaging a fun task. Read more »

In one of the bravest moves in smartphone history, HTC gave up on the megapixel war and decided to equip its latest smartphone with a 4 MP snapper at the back. The low resolution allowed each individual pixel to be much larger, which improves per-pixel detail and low-light performance significantly. So even though the HTC One sensor measures a modest 1/3″ in diagonal, each of its 4 million Ultrapixels (as HTC calls them) is much larger than that of the average smartphone (by about 300%).

So in theory, while you will be sacrificing some detail in well-lit environments, you should be getting better low-light results. Add the super bright F/2.0 lens and you should be getting the smartphone with the best low-light performance in business. And since you would be downsizing many of your images anyway, this seems like a fair trade to us. As long as the HTC One delivers on those promises, that is. Read more »

As usual with high-end devices, we are sure that by the time the HTC One hits the stores, there would be plenty of third-party accessories to choose from. Nevertheless, it’s still reassuring to know HTC has created several high-quality accessories, matching the HTC One colors and design language.

The list of accessories we managed to snap at the HTC One unveiling event includes several cases, a desk cradle, an external power-pack and a new white/silver version of the HTC Bluetooth stereo headset. Read more »

The HTC One comes with a brand new Snapdragon 600 chipset, which is the first to offer four 1.7GHz Krait CPU cores and we were pretty curious to find how much of a performance boost it brings.

To be honest we were taken by surprise by the HTC One processing prowess. We did expect it to deliver some of the best performance out there, but some of the scores were simply amazing. Read more »

HTC One is now official and it’s maker is hoping it will be its best chance of reclaiming the smartphone throne yet. Armed with 4.7″ 1080p display of insane pixel density, a 1.7GHz quad-core Krait CPU and a build quality like that, the HTC One is certainly in the running for the smartphone of the season.

But competition might disagree and Sony in particular will be keen to point your attention in the direction of its own Xperia Z. So we decided to pit them against each other and see which one comes on top. The Samsung Galaxy S III joined the fun, too, to show how much smartphones have evolved for the better part of a year. Read more »

Moments after the unveiling of HTC’s new flagship – the HTC One – we can now enjoy the first official video ad.

The video makes a nice job of explaining the various buzzwords HTC invented to pet-name some of the new features, introduced on the HTC One. Read more »

The camera of the Nexus 4 isn’t very good and we’ve confirmed this in our detailed review of the smartphone. However, Vic Gundotra has posted today that the company is “committed to making Nexus phones [with] insanely great cameras.”

This came out as a response to a discussion about the camera capabilities of the Nexus 4. Google’s Senior VP of Engineering even slipped out a little teaser saying, “just you wait and see.” Read more »

According to the sources at 9to5Google, Google will be opening its own chain of retail stores in the US by the end of the year around holiday shopping season.

This move may have come across as a surprise a couple of years ago, but with the advent of the Nexus devices and the Chromebook, along with upcoming devices such as Project Glass, a retail chain of stores is just the thing that the company needs. Read more »

Samsung recently started rolling out the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update for the Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II to give it the same Nature UX experience as its successor. Now, the Koreans have open sourced the kernel used for the update, which will help developers of custom ROMs.

Samsung has steadily been releasing source codes for the kernels used on its phones (the Galaxy S II ICS kernel was released in March), trying to play nice with the developer community. Read more »

Most smartphones don’t usually fancy dipping their toes in swimming pools, but not the Sony Xperia Z. The flagship smartphone was taken for some underwater action by an early adopter.

With its IP57 certification, the Xperia Z doesn’t even break a sweat shooting the 3-minute underwater video. Read more »