What if I was to say that we have in our mitts a device that is to end forever the reign of affordable mp3 players? Well, I could be wrong but the W8 seems to pack a lot of bang for a device of its miniscule stature and it doesn’t seem afraid to use it.

Sony Ericsson decided to relight an old flame in the face of the Xperia X8 by giving it a Walkman branding and sending it off into the unknown pockets of young, enthusiastic teens with affiliations for loud music. It has a 3” capacitive display of HVGA (320 x 480) resolution, 3.2 MP camera and the pocket-friendliness of its small body. And this just might be the only Walkman phone that has no orange coating whatsoever on its body. Read more »

After following the smartphone announcements lately, I kind of wish I lived in Korea. Barely two weeks after Pantech unveiled the world’s first Android smartphone with a 1.5 GHz dual-core CPU, KT Tech released Take Janus (yup, this is its name) with similar specs, and only for the Korean market again.

As you can see from the picture, the specs of the device are nothing short of fascinating. Read more »

Samsung did not taste the kind of success they may have expected with their bada OS smartphones. Even though both the Wave and Wave II were excellent devices, the lack of applications for the platform hurt their sales greatly. But Samsung isn’t keen on giving up and it seems they may have another high-end bada device in the pipeline.

According to a tweet by SamFirmware, the GT-S9500 would be the next Samsung Wave, or the Wave III as the site’s admin calls it. It will most probably be running bada 2.01 OS that we saw a few days back. Read more »

You know that LG is really the master when it comes to funny comparative advertisements. Just like they did in the ad of the LG Optimus Pad fighting an Apple iPad, now they released an even better one, this time focusing on the LG Optimus Black.

In the ad, the LG Optimus Black is in a race against some interestingly named phones. On the starting grid are Waffle’s Ivan (iPhone 4), Samson’s Gary S Jr. (Samsung Galaxy S II), Sonic’s Archie (Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play), Hightech’s Dwayne (HTC HD2). Read more »

You must remember the picture of the pink Nokia N8 that came out a few days back. You must because it’s difficult to get something that gaudy out of your mind in such short time. But Nokia isn’t relying on just the color to shock you. They have gone ahead and made a video complete with tattooed dolls with necks that turn 360-degree, an N8 that shoot lazers and dismembered dolls limbs. And you thought Sony’s ads are weird.

As you can see below, the video is pretty, uh, interesting. You don’t see much of the phone itself as you’d want to meaning this is all just viral marketing and Nokia’s attempt at keeping interest in the N8 going. But we think they should spend more time focusing on showcasing the upcoming Anna update for the N8 instead of dolls doing unspeakable things with it while the Sugarbabes play in the background (admittedly that’s the least offensive part of the video). Read more »

Sprint USA has confirmed that the HTC EVO 3D will be shipping with 3D content preinstalled. There were no dates given as to when exactly customers can expect the device, though.

The EVO 3D will have preloaded a 3D version of the movie Green Hornet and will come with the HTC Watch and Blockbuster services for movie buying and rentals with special 3D content available via those services too. Read more »

Of all the Android app markets the world has to offer, the Amazon one is the best to visit today. It offers the popular Plants vs Zombies game exclusively and it’s free for today only.

The game is quite a fun and offers a unique defense style of gameplay. You plant all sorts of battle-ready vegetation in front of your house so the upcoming crafty zombies don’t eat your brains. Read more »

It seems that CMIT has beaten Asus to the phone in a tablet dock punch because on 28 May, two days before the Asus Padphone went official (and only five days after the initial teaser).

There’s not much info on the so-called TransPhone but it supposedly runs Android on a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm CPU. Read more »

Nokia is showcasing the NFC capabilities of its C7 Symbian device using an NFC version of the widely popular Angry Birds game, dubbed Magic. This all goes down at the MeeGo conference in San Francisco. The purpose of the game is to find someone with a C7 smartphone and using the NFC chip inside to unlock levels, after you’re done with the previous ones.

You get 5 levels of Angry Birds after which you will need to unlock the next five by pairing two C7 units together. It’s a clever idea, I have to admit. Read more »

HTC filed a request at the US Patent and Trademark Office to protect the term HTC Play as a trademark. Reportedly this is the name of a future HTC-exclusive app market for games (I’m guessing Android ones), to which every HTC phone will have access.

Now I’m not sure if another app store is what we most need at the moment, as there are, what, 10 of them already? You have the Amazon store you have the Opera store, a couple of obscure ones like SlideMe and, of course, the Android Market . I just don’t see the point. Android started off as a unified OS with its own ecosystem, spanning through manufacturer to manufacturer. Now there are Xperia PLAY-exclusive games, exclusive application stores and this all makes the choice of which droid to grab all the harder for the end user. Read more »

TomTom is a respected GPS tycoon, which makes receivers and also provides the map data and know-how. Now it looks like it’s thinking of branching out into the street viewing business, which is Google and Microsoft exclusive territory so far. We guess those two wouldn’t exactly appreciate that.

This comes after a very intriguing picture was uploaded to Tumblr.com, showing a TomTom van with a 360-degree cam mounted on top of it. What else could be used for except making an all-round street view service? Read more »

It appears that we haven’t seen the best of the Samsung Galaxy Tab family just yet. Just a few weeks before those super slim Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 8.9 hit the shelves, the president of the company’s mobile division, J.K. Shin, went on record saying that they will be releasing at least one more slate this year.

The Galaxy Tab 4G, if we had to take a wild guess for the name, will be released before 2011 has ended, extending the company tablet portfolio to four devices. Read more »

Although Motorola announced the DROID BIONIC in April, the handset hasn’t launched yet because Motorola wanted to make certain changes to the device. However, an image uploaded on Swedish mobile benchmarking site NenaMark suggests that the changes are quite dramatic.

Initially, the DROID BIONIC was reported to run on an Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset. But the image below tells us that it is now running on Read more »

Google have just announced their new Google Wallet and Google Offers services, this then dropped them straight into a lawsuit with PayPal, but that’s not going to stop them from rolling out their new service.

Google Wallet hopes to make use of the NFC infrastructure as a mobile based payment system. Read more »

Anyone else caught wind of this? Apparently some iOS users have recently stumbled upon a revamped version of Google’s mobile site. Primarily the changes are cosmetic but in a big way. It appears Google have gone for a more graphical UI, displaying their primary services via an app screen style, 4×3 layout with tabbed window elements to boot.

The icons aim to help specify your search terms with categories such as images, places and news. Read more »