We’ve already seen Bada 2.0.1 in screenshots and on video, but now you can try it too – if you have a Samsung S8530 Wave II and you’re willing to install an unfinished firmware on it, that is.

There are quite a few people already who have given it a spin and they’ve shot quite a few videos showing the new version of Bada. If you decide to join them, you should know that the firmware is old (April) and has its bugs. Read more »

We came across some photos of a device which devilishly looks akin to the current iPhone 4 but runs on a test software and is said to be a prototype of the next, much anticipated iPhone 4S, 4GS, 5 or whatever Apple will call it. According to the person, who leaked this, the device features a 5 MP camera instead of an 8 MP one and runs iOS 4.0, but inside there’s the latest A5 dual-core processor as seen on the iPad 2.

A picture is usually worth a thousand words but in this case we see nothing truly new or interesting. The device has no visible changes to the exterior whilst the software is made for testing purposes and is also old news. Still rumors suggest this could be the N94 – a prototype iPhone 5 with the dual-core A5 processor, 5 MP camera and support for the T-Mobile USA network.

Update: Now that we’ve looked more carefully into the facts, it seems the most likely scenario is that this phone is a prototype or rather a test unit for the last year’s iPhone 4, similar to the one being sold on Ebay not long ago. The original source doesn’t suggest in any way there’s an A5 chip inside plus there’s this thing it runs on the original iOS 4.0. Obviously the fellows over at 9to5mac.com (our intermediary source) have been a little bit overexcited and have reported mainly their own speculations on the matter.

Read more »

The Motorola Photon 4G for Sprint caused some salivation when it was announced in early June and now we have the two last pieces of the puzzle – the pricing and the exact launch date.

The dual-core droid is a CDMA phone with 4G connectivity (WiMAX in this case), but it works on GSM networks, too. Still, if you want one, you’ll have to sign a 2-year contract with Sprint. Read more »

Back in April when the iPhone secret location tracking took over the media attention, Apple was quick to dismiss it as a non-issue and said it wasn’t doing anything wrong. However, that’s not what the Changwon District Court in Sourth Korea thinks as it has just ordered the Cupertino-based company to pay compensation to a user because of it.

In fact Reuters reports that Apple has already made the payment of $946 to Mr. Hyung-suk (not surprisingly, a lawyer himself). And while that kind of cash will hardly make Steve Jobs lose his sleep, what will follow next might. Apparently, the law firm that won the case is gearing up to launch a class action against Apple. Read more »

PayPal has announced a cool new way to transfer money from one person to another. It involves the use of the NFC technology found in some of today’s smartphones.

To make this work, all you have to do is install the PayPal widget on your phone. Then you enter the amount that you want to receive in this widget and touch your phone to the person’s phone who will be sending you the money. Once the phone vibrates, the other person is asked to enter their pin number, following which the transaction is completed and you get the money along with a confirmation email. Read more »

You may remember Sony Ericsson’s Facebook competition that asked its fans to do video reviews of the txt pro and the Mix Walkman. Today, we have the Sony Ericsson txt pro in our office and we thought we should take it for a quick spin on video too.

The txt pro is an extra tiny phone and it’s got its eye on messaging – and more specifically, social networking messaging. The slide-out QWERTY is more comfortable to use than you might think just by looking at it (it really is quite small), but it adds to the thickness of the phone, pushing it up to 18mm. Read more »

As one of the hottest devices to hit the market this far into 2011, the HTC EVO 3D has some seriously high expectations to live up to. We managed to get our hands on the U.S. only version of the device, which is sold exclusively from Sprint Wireless, and here are our initial impressions.

In terms of hardware, the HTC EVO 3D is not significantly different from the HTC Sensation save for a couple of things. First, Read more »

Nokia may not care much about MeeGo but they sure do care about the N9 a lot and are doing their best to keep interest alive in the product alive. Their recent effort in achieving this goal involves creating a series of six ultra quick and interlinked nine second ads for the N9. Nokia claims these are the world’s quickest ads.

Each of the six ads are based around one of the N9′s key feature, such as the swipe gesture, web browser, social media connectivity, maps, camera and the all-screen design. All six ads are on YouTube now and after watching them all, I must they didn’t make a lot of sense. But I guess they are not supposed to make a lot of sense. Read more »

Today we’re joined by the Sony Ericsson Xperia ray to talk about small smartphones. It measures just 9.4mm in thickness and the 3.3″ screen makes for a very compact phone overall. Sony Ericsson didn’t skimp on the resolution though – the screen packs 480 x 854 pixels, which means nearly 300ppi pixel density (the iPhone 4′s Retina display has 326ppi).

Aside from low-res screens, small smartphones usually get stuck with an old chipset – that’s not the case with the Xperia ray either. It has a 1GHz CPU and can record 720p video from its 8MP camera. Read more »

The iPhone Dev Team has scored yet another point in their fight against Apple for keeping iOS free of its chains. It only took them a few hours after the latest iOS 5 beta was released to prepare the Snowbreeze update, which jailbreaks it.

Unfortunately, owners of the iPhone 3GS units with the old bootrom are the only ones, who will get untethered start-up for their devices after the jailbreak. iPhone 4, iPod Touch, iPad and newer-bootrom iPhone 3GS owners will have to hook up their device to a computer every time they need to boot into jailbroken state. Read more »

Microsoft’s CEO took the stage during the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference, which is held this week in Los Angeles, and revealed some interesting bits about the company’s mobile platform. Steve Ballmer admitted that Windows Phone 7 hasn’t been particularly successful yet and in a year its market share has gone “from very small to… very small”.

And while those are hardly the words Microsoft partners were hoping to hear, Ballmer remains optimistic about WP7′s prospects. Expectations are that more users and developers will be drawn to the platform in the years to come and it will be able to compete with the Android and iOS behemoths. Read more »

Here’s a juicy rumor for all the Android purists out there. The next Nexus phone (reportedly called Nexus 3) will be manufactured by HTC and it will be packing a dedicated Google+ button. Supposedly that button will work much like the Facebook button on the ChaCha and Salsa HTC smartphones.

This means that you will be able to share content from your smartphone just by clicking the button, rather than having to through numerous menus on the touchscreen. Read more »

The Sidekick series of QWERTY phones has been among T-Mobile USA’s bestsellers ever since its launch several years ago. All members of the family have featured a full keyboard which pops out through an unusual mechanism. That’s why, when we got the chance to spend some time with the latest member of the highly successful line, we barely hesitated.

The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is a major departure from its predecessors – not in terms of design, but in hardware and OS. While the older Sidekicks were made by Danger or Sharp, featuring a blend of feature and smartphone functionality, the latest one is manufactured by Samsung, packs Android 2.2 Froyo, and quite capable hardware for its price range. Read more »

The second of the HTC Facebook phones has just arrived at our office, where it should be receiving the full review treatment. Unlike its ChaCha cousin, the HTC Salsa lacks a hardware keyboard, but the Facebook button is still there so sharing stuff on your favorite social network is as easy as it gets.

As the tradition goes in these cases, we are giving you a few live shots and a quick unboxing video for a basic idea of what to expect. We included a short demo of the Facebook button functionality at the end so make sure you watch the whole thing. Read more »

There’s just so many iPhone rumors these days that it’s hard to keep track. Luckily, here comes this Brazilian tech site to the rescue summarizing them all and creating a hot-looking concept based on them.

So yeah that mockup doesn’t bring much new information (in fact none at all), but it just helped us realize how hot of a device the new iPhone will be. The slimmer body, following the iPhone 4 design lines, carries one less aperture and much more screen on the front and the result is just marvelous to behold. Read more »