Maps and Drive have long been one of the staples of Nokia Windows Phone devices, and today they’re being rolled as part of Nokia’s HERE cloud location service.

Also integrated are the Transit and City Lens apps, which allow for quick access to public transit information and nearby POIs in addition to the cartography and navigation features provided by Drive and Maps. However, the services will no longer bear the Nokia branding. Read more »

At Nokia’s press conference here at MWC, CEO Stephen Elop announced that the number of available Windows Phone apps has reached and surpassed the 130,000 milestone.

Popular new additions include the WhatsApp cross-platform messaging client, as well as the re-branded HERE suite of navigation and mapping applications. Read more »

It’s the routine in action – moments after unveiling a product, the manufacturer publishes a set of promo videos, highlighting its strengths.

In the case of Nokia we’re now seeing two videos – one for the Lumia 720 and another one for the Lumia 520. These follow after the break. Read more »

Huawei just announced their Ascend P2 with the fastest LTE speed seen on a smartphone. The device sports a 4.7″ 720p screen, quad-core K3V2 processor, 13 MP camera, Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and more.

And now Hiawei has uploaded a promo video of the Ascend P2, which focuses on its many traits – you’ll find it after the break. Read more »

Xenon tubes have been powering the camera flashes for ages now, but with phones getting thinner every year, manufacturers have no choice but replace them with LED lights. What’s more, the performance of the few xenon flashes we’ve seen implemented in smartphones recently is underwhelming because the smaller the flash capacitor, the weaker the light output is.

A Singapore invention however has the potential to allow xenon flashes to reclaim some of the lost turf from LEDs. Researchers from the Nanyang Technological University have developed a revolutionary new type of capacitor, which is significantly smaller than the ones currently in use, while being equally powerful and even faster in recharging. Read more »

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 »