Everyone is talking about how fast the 4G LTE data speeds are but most people seem to have forgotten that 4G was supposed to bring a new VoIP-based calling to replace the old circuit-switched 2G and 3G systems. So, why isn’t Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) here yet? The answer seems to be battery life.

In the US, one carrier does support VoLTE and Spirent-Metrico ran tests comparing it to good ol’ CDMA. Read more »

Roughly a month after its Windows RT sibling made it to the market, Microsoft announced pricing and availability of its Surface Pro slate. The tablet will be available in January, priced at $899 for a model with 64GB of memory, and $999 for a version with 128GB built-in.

The Microsoft Surface Pro will not come bundled with a Touch or Type cover. You will have to spend some extra cash to have one of the handy covers at your service. The tablet will however, come with a Surface pen with Palm Block technology in the box. Read more »

The CyanogenMod team has been teasing version 10.1 (that’s based on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean) for various devices with just screenshots, but Nexus 4 users can now actually grab a nightly release of the ROM and take it for a spin.

The Nexus 10 tablet will be getting CM10.1 soon as well, but the team doesn’t give any hard deadlines. Read more »

Sailfish OS is the big hope of MeeGo fans everywhere. Jolla, the people behind Sailfish, showed off their creative new UI about a week ago and how it takes MeeGo’s heavily swipe-based interface even further. But the short video was not enough for all the MeeGo enthusiasts out there, so Jolla’s CEO, Marc Dillon, took the time to answer some user questions.

Mr. Dillon demos the things that are working on a Sailfish-running phone, including how many apps the UI can handle at one, landscape mode, going between app and homescreen, and more. Read more »

The Galaxy Note is one lucky phablet. Not only did it get an official update to Jelly Bean, which is still rare enough, but it is also about to get a new major update, bringing the cool Multi-View feature from the Note II.

If you are impatient, you don’t even have to wait any longer to get some of the Multi-View action on your Galaxy Note, as a test firmware with build number N7000XXLSA is now available for download. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S III mini is a scaled down version of its big namesake – that means a smaller 4″ screen, two CPU cores instead of four and a smaller battery too, with 1,500mAh capacity.

Did the battery life scale accordingly, is it still the same, or even better? That’s what we’re here to find out. Read more »

Although not a lot of people have managed to get their hands on Google’s latest and greatest smartphone, we have already started seeing some complaints from the early adopters. One of the major issues so far has been a buzzing in the earpiece that a significant number of owners are reporting.

But by far the biggest pain point is the glass back on the Nexus 4, which has an affinity to crack when the device is dropped. However, it seems that dropping may not be the only way to break the glass. It can also break with something as simple as temperature change. Read more »

The Nokia Lumia 920 features optical image stabilization (OIS) for its 8MP camera and while Nokia dropped the ball when it was discovered its promo video was not shot with the 920 at all, fans took it on themselves to reshoot the sample. But riding a bike is too mellow, driving a four by four through the desert puts lot more stress on the OIS and is much cooler too.

UK Mobile Review has a series of posts on how its team did the test, culminating in a 8 minute long video of them driving across sand dunes in the desert near Dubai. Read more »

The Nokia 3310 is widely regarded as the toughest phone on the face of the Earth. A Chuck Norris of the phone world, if you will.

And to check out if this is an urban legend or an actual fact, the guy from the Will it Blend series of videos puts the mighty 3310 to the ultimate blend test. Read more »

We enjoy putting phones through their paces in our office, but as a manufacturer, Samsung too subjects its phones to a host of reliability tests before launching them on the market. And it’s a different type of tests, mind you. A Samsung made video gives you a rare glimpse behind the curtains of their test facilities.

It’s a video ad, that’s alright, but none of these tests seems staged. I’m sure most (if not all) Samsung phones go through stringent testing procedures like these (even employing the help of “I sat on my phone” buttocks dummy). Key press tests, USB socket rigidness, twisting and flexing, abrasive action by vibrating foreign objects, and even rain – it’s all there. Read more »

Nokia has just introduced a couple of new members of its Asha family today and, as the tradition goes in such cases, the company released a few promo videos to demo their strengths.

The QWERTY-packing Nokia Asha 205 had a single clip dedicated to it, while the Asha 206 got two videos. Check them out after the break. Read more »

It has been brought to our attention that the Nexus 4 does not support USB On-The-Go functionality, even though Google says that it does.

Although Google does not advertise this feature, it is mentioned in the user guide (jump to page 43). However, several users on xda-developers forum are confirming that this functionality is not actually available on the device. Read more »

With the Nokia Lumia 820 exclusive to AT&T in the United States, the Finnish manufacturer had to resort to rebranding tactics in order to put its mid-range Windows Phone 8 offering on other carrier’s shelves. The Nokia Lumia 810 for T-Mobile is one such product – the stealthy looking handset is essentially a clone of the Lumia 820 with some minor tweaks thrown in.

Like its 920 and 820 siblings, the Nokia Lumia 810 packs a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset and a gig of RAM. Read more »

Singer and musician Will.i.am (Black Eyed Peas) is getting ready to release its own line of iPhone accessories. But these are not your run-of-the-mill accessories, we’re talking serious stuff. His lineup will be called i.am+ and the first accessory will be shell, which adds a real 14MP camera to the smartphone.

“We have our own sensor and a better flash. You dock you phone into our device and it turns you smartphone into a genius-phone. We take over the camera.” – says Will.i.am. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S III mini stops by our office for a second time – the first time we did a preview and we’ll do a full review now. Before we start, we put it in front of our camera and give you a quick reminder of what the S III mini offers.

In a “Honey, I shrunk the kids” moment, Samsung took the Galaxy S III and created a mini version of it, dropping the screen size from the pocket-busting 4.8” to the much more manageable 4”. Read more »