Samsung has managed to keep a surprisingly tight lid on the Galaxy S IV, especially considering that the launch is just a week away. GottaBeMobile partnered with Martin Hajek to try and guess what the Galaxy S IV will look like. The result is cool-looking concept renders like this one:

The design is based on the most common rumors about the device and a healthy dose of imagination. Read more »

The LG Optimus G Pro is the current king of phablets – other phablets couldn’t put up much of a fight against the 5.5” 1080p screen or the Snapdragon 600 chipset. The phablet market exploded after the first Galaxy Note came around and quickly went from niche to millions of units and LG has engineered the Optimus G Pro to be the best in that field.

The screen is pretty amazing – it has excellent viewing angles (better than the Optimus G screen) and great colors. Read more »

Sony India has signed the popular Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif as a brand ambassador for the Xperia range of smartphones. The latest association is expected to boost the brand’s value in the Indian market and help the company plans to extend the presence of Xperia smartphones there.

Sony also expects to capture more of the youth market as the actor is highly popular among the younger audience. Meanwhile, Sony has tripled its investment from Rs. 100 crore to Rs. 300 crores for the marketing of its Xperia range of smartphones. Read more »

Sony had an impressive video wall at its MWC booth, which was built entirely out of Sony Xperia ZL smartphones (196 of them). And it’s a candidate for a world record – it’s not official yet, but the current record is held by a setup with only 72 phones. Guinness is expected to confirm the record.

The video wall was created by Visionmill and one of the guys who worked on it, Matt Mapleston, shared some details on the wall on his blog. Read more »

It looks like the Sony Xperia Z SO-02E for the Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo is using a display unit with noticeably better quality than its globally available C6603 counterpart. A photo shoot, comparing the screens of the two devices side by side reveals the difference.

As you can see in the image above, the Sony Xperia Z SO-02E sports a display visibly punchier colors and arguably better viewing angles. Read more »

Over the past several years, Samsung has gradually risen to become one of the top ten most valuable brands, and one of the top dogs in the mobile realm.

To get a taste of how exactly they accomplished this, dutch site typhone.nl has created a nifty new infographic of Samsung’s evolution. Read more »

A nifty new Chrome experiment has caught our eye recently, one which lets you and your friends use smartphones or tablets to control online games.

You and up to three other people can swim, cycle or run your fingers against each other in this nifty new way to have fun with your mobile devices. Read more »

You may have been surprised today to see a new app icon in your drawer, the Google Settings, getting you access to previously unseen dashboard of settings.

While the more tech savvy among us might suspect some hidden malware is at work, what’s actually at play is a silent update to the Google Play Services app. Read more »

After Canonical issued the alpha version of its mobile version of Ubuntu for the select Nexus devices (Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10), the company has now updated the list of upcoming devices bound to receive a developer preview of the OS.

The list includes devices from Samsung, LG, HTC, ASUS, Motorola and Huawei, which marks the company’s efforts to get its name out there by enabling more and more users to try out the touch-enhanced version of Ubuntu. Read more »

Kyocera Communications and US Cellular have launched the Kyocera DuraPro, which is a military standard 810G certified phone. After the launch of Cat B15 at MWC, DuraPro is the second rugged phone to be announced in a span of two days.

Kyocera DuraPro is said to be a water, shock, dust and vibration resistant flip phone, which is encased in non-slip Dura-Grip material for… you know, extra durability. The company claims the rugged device will withstand immersion in up to a meter of water for about 30 minutes. Read more »

Samsung were busy doing their usual thing in 2012, which basically is flooding the market with (Android) smartphones. But did you ever wonder about the exact numbers? Well, Strategy Analytics has them for you.

Samsung’s 2012 global smartphone shipments are estimated at 213,000,000 devices. In terms of share, the Koreans had 30.4% of the entire smartphone market last year. Read more »

The latest HTC flagship, the HTC One, holds inside it some impressive WiFi horsepower in the form of Broadcom’s new 5G WiFi chip.

The BCM4335 is slated to deliver more bandwidth and higher range, all at significantly lower battery costs. Read more »

The Asus MWC event yesterday brought the Padfone Infinity and the Fonepad. It wasn’t very well organized for the press, but luckily, you can watch the highlights in the comfort of your own home.

Asus tried to spice the event up with a mini magic show, but that was mostly cut out of the video. What does that say about how engaging the performance was? Read more »

Nokia has announced that a beta trial of its DLNA streaming app Play To will be available for Windows Phone 8-powered Nokia devices.

Like similar streaming apps, Play To lets you wirelessly share photos, music, and videos to DLNA-enabled devices, including TV’s and receivers. Read more »

The Nokia Lumia 520 was only announced this morning and T-Mobile USA is already claiming a piece of the action. The carrier will get a dedicated version of the phone – 521 – which differs only in the supported 3G frequencies.

The Lumia 520, or 521 in this case, is an upgrade over the current 510 – it runs Windows Phone 8 on a 1GHz dual-core Krait processor, with double the RAM (512MB), double the internal storage (8GB, there’s a microSD card slot too) and 720p video capture. You can check out our hands-on impressions from the MWC for more info. Read more »