The Galaxy S III is officially announced and Samsung are throwing down the gauntlet to everyone willing to go step up to the plate. Naturally, the challenge is accepted by Apple and Nokia with their flagship smartphones – the iPhone 4S and the Lumia 900.

So, the game is on. All bets are off and it’s everyone for themselves. But enough idioms, let’s take a look at whether Samsung can blow the fish out of the water with the Galaxy S III (ok, there was one more idiom). Read more »

Eager to continue the success of the Galaxy S II, Samsung has loaded its successor, the Galaxy S III, with everything latest and greatest in the mobile world.

But to get on the smartphone throne the new Samsung flagship will need to outdo the current kings of the hill – the HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. All of them have HD screens and run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and they are all after your hard-earned cash. Here’s how they stack up. Read more »

The first TV ad for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III just hit the internet.

While it doesn’t show much of the actual smartphone, it gives us a glimpse of some of the neat connectivity features of the new Samsung flagship. Read more »

Nokia released a new video shot with their 808 PureView monster of a cameraphone and it’s awesome. It’s a time-lapse video shot in South Africa and it really highlights the power of the creative mode feature – the mode that uses oversampling to improve quality and allow for lossless digital zoom.

Check out the video after the break, just make sure to view it in 1080p and in fullscreen so you can enjoy it in its full shine. Read more »

Bang & Olufsen, more commonly known as B&O, has launched a new LCD TV called the BeoPlay V1. The best part about this set is the flexibility of its design that allows you to position it in multiple ways.

The TV has a unique mount for the stand that allows four different positions. One allows you to wall mount the TV, the other can be used to place it on the floor at a sufficient height so that it is approximately the same height as your seating position, the other places it at floor level with a tilt to point it towards you and the last one lets you hang the TV from the ceiling so it looks like it is suspended in mid-air. Read more »

HTC released the first OTA update for the One X last week, but the Taiwanese are already ready with update number 2. The new firmware release is 1.29.401.7 and is supposed to improve several aspects of the handset’s UI and performance.

The update is 35MB in size and provides minor bug fixes as well as various system improvements and optimization. HTC hasn’t released an official changelog as of yet, but users over at the XDA forums report that power management has been improved resulting in better battery life. Read more »

The recently released HTC One X for AT&T is surprisingly doing better in most of the popular benchmark tests as compared to its international sibling.

The reason for the sometimes noticeable differences is quite simple: despite the similar look and name, they actually have completely different insides. Read more »

For all you owners of the Samsung Galaxy Note who want some sweet custom ROM action, CyanogenMod now has a release based on its latest Android ICS build, Cyanogenmod 9, available for download.

If you’re willing to risk voiding your warranty, and you can get along with the few known issues, the CyanogenMod ROM is a great way to get some added functionality out of your device. Read more »

When the video of the ‘Wake Up’ protest outside the Australian Apple Store hit the Internet, it was generally assumed that Samsung would be behind this, considering their track record of taking jabs at Apple. But later when asked about this, the company denied being behind it.

A few days ago, Mactalk‘s James Croft went through the source code of the Wake Up page and found clues that pointed towards RIM’s Australian website. The date that the website was counting down to was also speculated as the approximate release date for the BlackBerry 10. And lastly, the blogger who just happened to be there to shoot the video of the protest outside the Apple Store has previously worked for RIM. Read more »

LG is stepping up its game with the announcement of a cloud storage service of its own. Unimaginatively called LG Cloud, what else, the new service is now available. The service will offer 50GB of free storage for the first six months.

Best of all, right from launch, LG Cloud comes with a desktop client (for Windows, at least). What’s also interesting is that the file stored in the LG Cloud will be accessible by LG SmartTVs too. Read more »

Recently we reported a brand new free software unlock method that could free your iPhone from the shackles of its official carrier. Popular SIM unlock solutions provider Gevey revealed their latest SIM insert soon after that – after a long stall in the unlocking development it now offered an unlock solution regardless of baseband version for $50.

Now Apple-N-Berry, the Gevey distributor, is recalling all units sold, the reason being Apple has closed the security loophole that SAM used. Wait, what? Yup, Gevey are not only recalling their stuff, but they admit of blatantly copying the free SAM’s solution in a commercial product (and not a cheap one at that). Read more »

The Google Maps Android App has been updated with several new features, including a scale bar ala the desktop version, as well as plus/minus buttons, which you can be visible on-screen.

There’s also a nifty new Labs tool, which allows you to see the elevation difference between two points. Read more »

The Motorola RAZR MAXX topped our battery test charts, but Moto is keen to remind people that the MAXX is a champ in even more battery endurance disciplines – like GPS navigation, for example.

The RAZR MAXX went head to head with the iPhone 4S and the LG Spectrum. All three phones are on Verizon’s network (the MAXX and Spectrum are using LTE, while the 4S is on 3G) and are using VZ Navigator for the test. Read more »

Putting a smartphone on a helium balloon and having it fly high up in the sky has proven a popular pastime (there was even an iPad that braved the high altitudes), but it turns out serious scientist do it too as low-cost observation tools. The ASTRA project at South Hampton university has a thing for Windows Phone handsets and the latest was a Nokia Lumia 800.

As part of the ASTRA 10 series of flights, a Lumia 800 soared as high as 32km with nothing to help it face the cold or maintain connectivity. And conditions high up in the atmosphere are pretty rough. Read more »

Yesterday Google launched its Drive cloud service allowing you to upload virtually anything and have it synced across multiple devices. Sounds great and bringing a bit more competition to the mix has never hurt anyone.

But what happens once you store there that music piece you’ve been working on for so long? Or the concept art for that cool project at work? Do you still remain its owner and what do you allow the cloud storage provider to do with it? Google, Microsoft and Dropbox have different approaches how they handle the legal part of things and it isn’t something to be taken lightly. Read more »