Freshly announced last week during AT&T’s developer conference in Las Vegas, the Pantech Discover aims to rewrite the rulebooks for a budget Android smartphone in the United States. Priced at only $49.99 with a contract, the LTE handset offers better hardware specs than many members of the top-tier Android establishment at the moment.

The Pantech Discover features a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset with a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU and a gig of RAM. Read more »

If you have been waiting for the next major release of Microsoft Office, then you won’t have to wait too long. According to a pre-order page on Canadian retailer Future Shop (which has now been taken down), Office 2013 is set to release on January 29.

Microsoft announced Office 2013 back in July, and a Preview version was made available for download. Since then the software suite has shipped on every Windows RT device out there in the form of the same Preview version but the final version is now just over a week away from release. Read more »

We like the trend of capable smartphones, which can stand a little dip in the bath or pool and live to tell the story, without the sacrifice of the good looks.

Out of this very same mold comes the Sony Xperia V, sporting a dual-core Krait processor, a 13 MP FullHD-capable camera and IP67 certification. We’ve got the video after the break. Read more »

Ah, the poor Xperia Z. It’s not even launched yet, and it has already gone through a considerable amount of abuse. Still, Sony reckons it’s not enough to get users convinced, so now it has added a new variable to the torture equation – sand.

In the video you’re about to see a Sony representative not only rubs sand all over the Xperia Z to showcase its scratch-resistance, but also submerges it in water and hits a sharp edge with it. Read more »

Announced late last year, the entry-level HTC One SV made its way to our office. The 4G LTE smartphone will be offered in a number of European countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom. In the US, the handset will be available for Cricket Wireless.

The specifications of the HTC One SV are a rather curious mix of old and new. Read more »

Sony has posted a video of three guys assembling a Cyber-shot RX1 point and shoot, Handycam camcorder and the Xperia Z flagship smartphone in about 5 minutes time.

The video isn’t in fast-motion and looks to be completely credible. If you always wondered how hard it is to put those devices together, just take a comfortable place and enjoy the show. Read more »

Oppo, the up and coming Chinese smartphone manufacturer, has announced a new program designed to spread the word about its new Find 5 smartphone.

The Ambassador program is envisioned to help Oppo locate volunteers for help with product testing, translations, and spreading the word about Oppo products. Read more »

The Sony Xperia Z flagship surely spend its sweet time in the spotlight at CES 2013 last week and it’s not even going to give up on it soon. We learned quite a lot about the smartphone, and we even got to see the first samples from its 13MP camera.

Now however, we got another bunch of photos delivered to us courtesy of Clove UK, who took the flagship smartphone for a walk in the countryside. Read more »

It seems that someone with access to a Dalmore Tegra 4 evaluation board decided to see how it does on the GLBenchmark GPU benchmark for Android.

The results, if they turn out to be legitimate, show Nvidia’s latest mobile SoC offering as capable of some promising graphics performance, but ultimately falls short of taking the top spot away from Apple’s A6X chip. Read more »

Apple shares have slipped today during premarket and early market trading by nearly $17, bringing the overall value of Apple stock close to $500.

There are reports surfacing that Apple may have cut iPhone 5 component orders by half, in light of lower-than-expected demand. Read more »

The Sony Xperia Z is one of the hottest smartphones of the season and for a good reason – it’s got a 5″ 1080p screen, quad-core Krait processor, good looking all-glass body and last but not least it is IP57 certified, meaning it’s not afraid of a little dust and water.

Polish blog Komorkomania decided to test out the Xperia Z’s mechanical impact resistance and later dip into water for the sake of being thorough – check it out after the break. Read more »

A surprise leak on the XDA forums gave the Motorola Atrix 2 users access to an official Jelly Bean ROM for their smartphones. Under its new management, Motorola announced certain phones won’t be updated anymore. Still, for most of the handsets released in 2011 or later the update was to be guaranteed.

The Motorola Atrix 2 was released in October 2011 but it was never on the white list of the devices lucky enough to get an upgrade to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Read more »

Nokia’s Xpress Browser is the default web browser on the Nokia’s Asha lineup and it’s also an optional download for the Lumia phones, running on Windows Phone. Nokia prides on the capabilities of the web browser to compress data and reduce traffic.

To accomplish this Nokia servers process and compress all data to and from the mobile device. But has it occurred to you that in the process Nokia’s servers are also decrypting the information sent over the allegedly secure HTTPS protocol, which you may have thought no one has access to. Nokia does not refuse that, but claims you shouldn’t worry, as nothing is recorded. But can we trust it? Read more »

The ZTE Grand S is the Chinese company’s new smartphone flagship device, and looks to put ZTE on the map with its thin profile and 1080p screen.

Join us as we take a look at the stylish offering in our full hands-on. Read more »

Swype, the quick-type keyboard for Android, has had its beta version become available for download to anyone without the need to register.

The new beta features include a Smart Editor that lets you quickly edit a typed sentence, and Living Language, which suggests trending and popular words. Read more »