In a bid to attract even more buyers, HTC has announced that it will be giving away $25 worth of Google Play Store credit along with the purchase of every HTC One in the US.

In order to redeem this offer, you will have to purchase the HTC One on or before July 15, 2013. Once you do that, you will have to register the device with HTC and then you can redeem your $25 credit from the Play Store. This will let you download all the content available on the store, including apps, games, movies and TV shows, music, books and magazines. Read more »

Google’s Gesture Search – the nifty Android capability which lets you quickly access contacts, settings, applications and more through the use of on-screen gestures – has received an update which extends its character recognition to cover over 40 new languages.

New native character support also supports pinyin for Chinese language gestures. Read more »

Samsung puts the Galaxy S4 through tough tests to make sure the flagship is sturdy for everyday use – falls, hard knocks, water, heat, electricity, dust, the S4 has to face all smartphones’ biggest fears at the testing facility.

It’s an unpleasant affair for the phone, but it’s fun to watch for us humans, so Samsung released a video of the tests. Read more »

Yesterday, Samsung took the wraps off the Galaxy S4 zoom, which is part smartphone and part point and shoot camera. And they have now released a three minute long video that demonstrates the camera capabilities of this device.

Unlike some of the other Samsung videos in the past, this one cuts to the chase and actually shows what the phone is capable of. Even the little story of the girl going around and taking pictures is likable this time. You get to see the design of the phone in action, particularly the multifunction ring around the lens, along with features such as in-call photo share, 16 megapixel sensor, 10x optical zoom, optical image stabilization and the various camera modes and sharing options. Read more »

We’ve seen all sorts of comparisons between the top dogs of the smartphone world, Apple’s iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 in the past couple of months, but nothing quite like this.

This destruction test aims to show how sturdy the hardware of the two devices is – even going as far as getting run over by a car! Lets just say things didn’t go well for either contestant. Read more »

A feature that’s been missing in iOS for quite some time is set to finally make its way to Apple’s mobile platform with its most recent version.

Call-blocking in iOS 7 will not only block calls, but also prevents messages and even FaceTime calls from numbers you add to the list. Read more »

The latest report from Adduplex reveals that as of May 2013, some 80.2% of global Windows Phone devices are made by Nokia.

The bulk of the shares come at the expense of Samsung, who has largely moved away from Windows Phone in the past several quarters. Read more »

Colorware, a US-based company which specializes in creating custom paintjobs for a wide range of consumer electronics, has added the Samsung Galaxy S4 to its list of supported devices.

Unfortunately, getting yourself a custom-colored Samsung Galaxy S4 will set you back a cool $1000. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 scored a second certificate from Underwriters Laboratories (UL), this one for its screen. The 5″ Super AMOLED display with 1080p resolution achieves 97% coverage of the Adobe RGB, which can represent about 35% more color ranges than sRGB.

Earlier this year, the Galaxy S4 received another UL certification – one for its eco-friendliness – and one from TCO as well. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 flagship phone is split into two versions – with Snapdragon 600 chipset and with Exynos 5 SoC. Could there be a third one with Snapdragon 800? Quite possibly, according to an AnTuTu benchmark result for the SHV-E330S, which showed up with a 2.3GHz CPU.

That is supposedly the Galaxy S4 LTE Advanced model for Samsung’s home country of South Korea (which is where the benchmark was run too). Read more »

Oh dear! They say competition is the mother of progress but this is latest childish outbursts are mostly great for a laugh or inspiring fanboy wars depending on how seriously you take things.

After the Mobile Awards in the UK event concluded HTC’s UK decided to poke its rival Samsung on Twitter after winning Hottest phone of 2013 with the HTC One. After boasting about its victory the HTC UK Twitter account added an “Ouch @SamsungMobileUK”, which spurred the events to follow. Read more »

While preparing the full review of the Nokia Lumia 928, we were quite curious what its Xenon flash is capable of. We had a Samsung Galaxy S4 around so we decided to do an impromptu shootout in low light conditions. We’ve prepared a set of samples from both devices for you to see, both with and without flash under the same conditions.

The entire marketing blitz surrounding the Nokia Lumia 928 has been built around its camera’s low light prowess. The samples we are about to show you now are not about that (or at least, not entirely).

With OIS built-in, the device surely commands plenty of attention, but now we are concentrating on the flash performance of the two models. Hit the break to see how they fared. Read more »

The Internet loves making memes about how tough Nokia phones are and the trailer for the upcoming Man of Steel movie will just add fuel to that fire. The trailer (“presented by Nokia”) shows a quick peek of the Nokia Lumia 925, which as you may have heard will come in a limited Superman edition.

The trailer shows astounding amounts of destruction (the movie is directed by Zack Snyder of 300 and Watchmen fame, what did you expect). Check it out after the break. Read more »

There’s a lot of talk about Apple introducing a cheaper iPhone (even if Phil Schiller said no) and analyst Brian White thinks Cupertino will also break it’s black and white color scheme to introduce 5 color options on the “iPhone mini”.

There’s some evidence that Apple will introduce a third color option for its iPhone flagship, so colors might be on Jony Ive’s mind. Also, the iPod touch (an iPhone without the “phone”) does come in five different colors. Read more »

IDC has issued a report in predicting that in 2013 global smartphones sales will reach 958.8 million units. That’s a growth of 32.7% compared to last year smartphone shipments which accounted to 722.5 million units.

As a result of this growth, 52.2% of all mobile phone shipments will be smartphones. This effectively makes 2013 the first year in which smartphone shipments surpass those of feature phones, if only by a four of percent points. IDC believes this trend won’t stop soon as user demand for handheld devices is growing both in the developed and emerging markets. Read more »