The Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro stopped by our office today and we have some initial impressions to share, plus an unboxing and hands-on video. The petite messenger is about the same size as its predecessor, but packs a lot more punch.

Standing at just 92 x 53 x 18 mm the Xperia mini pro packs a 3″ HVGA screen, a big improvement over the 2.55″ QVGA of the original. And performance has been improved quite a lot too, thanks to the 1GHz CPU and the 512MB of RAM. Read more »

The HTC Wildfire S has just arrived on the T-Mobile USA shelves. The compact mid-range droid can be yours for free, thanks to an instant $200 discount and a web-only $79.99 discount, which doesn’t apply in brick and mortar stores.

Of course you will have to commit to a new two-year contract with T-Mobile to get the Wildfire S for nothing, but that is to be expected. You can get the phone from T-Mobile’s official site or from Walmart Wireless. Read more »

Over the past few days riots have broken out across London and even spread to other cities throughout the UK following the death of a 29 year old man shot by police last Thursday. What was initially a peaceful protest designed to question the legitimacy of the man’s shooting soon evolved into a violent riot.

As the days have passed, more and more groups of people, which the news have stated are ‘primarily made up of youths’, have congregated across London to riot, committing acts of vandalism, theft and arson in their wake. Read more »

The names of three upcoming Android smartphones headed to Sprint just got confirmed. Subscribers to the fourth largest US carrier will be getting access to the Samsung Epic 4G Touch, HTC EVO Design 4G and Motorola Admiral.

There’s not much information about the specs of those devices, but it’s pretty safe to say that the Epic 4G Touch will be a Samsung Galaxy S II variant, featuring a slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard. Read more »

T-Mobile sure loves tradition. The magenta colored operator began selling its myTouch branded droids a couple of years ago with the release of the myTouch 3G. Then along came the myTouch 3G Slide, followed by the myTouch 4G. Today we have the fourth member of the myTouch family which is called (yes, you got it right) the myTouch 4G Slide. It is made by HTC and has starred in quite a few leaks over the past few months under the name HTC Doubleshot. The Taiwanese company claims it is its best camera phone to date. This statement alone was enough to get us excited about spending time with the device.

Now on with some specs Read more »

Huawei’s recently announced premium droid, the Vision, is proving quite the talking point for users, so you might find this interesting – a promo video, which highlights the custom eye-candy rich interface, and also a 360-degree spin to show off the sleek aluminum unibody.

The custom interface that runs on top of Android 2.3 Gingerbread is a modified version of SPB’s Shell 3D launcher. Check it out: Read more »

Samsung and Sprint has just announced the availability and pricing details of the upcoming Samsung Conquer 4G. The Android smartphone will be available from 21 August for just $99 bucks on a two-year contract.

The Samsung Conquer 4G is a droid with a 3.5″ HVGA (320×480) display, runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 3.2 MP autofocus camera on the back (and a 1.3 MP front-facing one) and powered by a 1 GHz MSM8655 Snapdragon processor. The Conquer 4G is also a dual-mode handset as it can use nationwide 3G networks as well as Sprint’s own WiMAX network. Read more »

Speed Dots is a California-based company that makes a special kind of screen protector for iPhones and iPod touches. These screen protectors have dots placed at strategic locations that helps visually impaired users operate these devices with ease.

These screen protectors work with the Voiceover feature in iOS devices that reads out functions on the screen to help visually impaired users but thanks to the dots, it makes locating a particular area on the screen much easier. Read more »

Qualcomm has been among the most successful chip manufacturer as of late, but I don’t think many of you can name more than a couple of their products. The Snapdragon brand name is all fine, but the different chipsets within the family were so confusingly named that you couldn’t tell which one has a high-end dual core CPU and which is designed for the run-of-the-mill handsets.

Luckily, the company has finally decided to do something about it and from now instead of all the MSM, APQ and QSD madness we will be seeing just one number to indicate a chipset class allegiance. Read more »

We have some bad news to those of you eager to taste some quad-core mobile action. Nvidia has confirmed that it will be delaying its Kal-El platform by a couple of months and tablets with it will only be available in Fall, rather than this month.

And the first smartphones based on the Kal-El will only become available around CES next year. Of course, extending the wait isn’t ideal, but considering that the quad-core Nvidia Kal-El should bring a 5x performance improvement over Tegra 2, we would still be getting better treatment than the Moore’s law would suggest. Read more »

A sneak peek video of the BlackBerry Torch 9860 has popped up, courtesy of Vodafone UK. It highlights the BlackBerry OS 7-wearing smartphone’s main features and, of course, the fact that Vodafone already has dips on the 9860.

You can see the camera in action and parts of the user interface and the browser but the whole video is not meant to be a thorough walkthrough. Read more »

RIM is throwing a BlackBerry media event tomorrow in London and it’s most probably about the UK launch of the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900. We still don’t have the event program confirmed however initial rumors suggest just that.

The launch of the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 is one of the most highly anticipated BlackBerry events this year. Hopefully, the wait will be over and the phone will finally launch tomorrow.

Codenamed Dakota, the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 comes from the latest generation of BlackBerry phones – those that combine a full QWERTY keyboard with a VGA touchscreen. The Bold Touch 9900 utilizes a 1.2GHz processor and features the latest BlackBerry OS 7. Read more »

It’s that time again, folks – the time for the iPhone 5 rumor of the week. This time we came across some snapshots of a mysterious iPhone with a design unseen so far anywhere. So, naturally, the question is whether this 64GB would-be iPhone is the real deal or not – is this the fabled new design the next generation iPhone will offer?

Well, here are some arguments that just quickly popped to my mind – the volume keys are again a single piece – which is a step backward from the current design logic. The device looks tangibly thicker than the iPhone 4 (which is just 9.3mm) – a definite no-no in today’s tech design trends.

The outer rim of the phone doesn’t look like an antenna or even made out of steel (it just looks plastic – see how the Apple logo doesn’t seem reflective) so I can only assume this thing’s fake.

Oh, and also look at the bezel around the screen – and there’s also considerable slack space above the home button. And finally the sign – “Designed by APOLLO in California” doesn’t scream legitimate either. Read more »

You thought Nokia’s naming convention sucked? Well, you are not alone. We do, too. The good news is someone at the company is finally coming to their senses. The unexplainable model naming fiasco that caused serious confusion for consumers (and tech journalists, mind you) is finally coming to an end.

Today, Nokia is officially changing its naming convention, and they are making it as simple as it was back in the mid-1990s (or even simpler). The latest Nokia 500 is actually the first product from the new era.

The new naming pattern which Nokia is about to follow is as simple as it gets. Read more »

Some things just shouldn’t exist but they do – the Windows 7 running Fujitsu F-07C is one of those things. Note that this is “Windows 7″, not “Windows Phone 7″. And that’s not the weird part either – the phone actually runs Symbian on an 600MHz Atom CPU, along with Windows 7 running inside a virtual machine (rather than a dual-boot solution as originally thought).

Actually, the idea behind the F-07C is a good one – it’s just that it’s too late. Akihabara News have a review of the odd gadget, so go check it out if you’re curious. Here are the highlights of the review. Read more »