The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a split personality – it’s either powered by a Snapdragon 600 chipset (the I9505) or by Samsung’s own Exynos 5 Octa (the I9500). It took a while before it became clear which model goes to which country, but now it’s time to find out the answer to a more important question – does it matter?

Typically, Samsung uses Qualcomm chipsets for its US models (due to the chipsets built-in LTE support) and sold their Exynos smartphones elsewhere. Now, the situation is different and the Snapdragon-based model is more common, perhaps due to low manufacturing capacity for the new eight core Exynos chipset. Read more »

Lenovo slowly but surely shows its potential of becoming a respectable smartphone maker (the K900 being its latest and greatest Android smartphone), but outside of China, its smartphones are only available in India, Indonesia and Russia.

The company’s CEO Yang Yanqing however, has expressed in an interview that his company is looking into expanding its reach to Europe and the United States. Read more »

If you ever stumbled upon the recently created Windows Phone tumblr blog, you’d have notice a smattering of amusing GIFs comparing the quality of the Lumia 920′s low light images against those of the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy S III.

Now, they have released a video that shows the three phones placed side by side, shooting the same bizarre scene all at the same time and then the results are provided for you to see. As you can guess, the Lumia 920 comes out on top with a significantly brighter image, with the iPhone 5 a distant second and the Galaxy S III in the last. Read more »

The Nokia Lumia 928 brought something we hadn’t seen in a while – xenon flash – but it’s a Verizon exclusive, others are getting the thinner, but LED flash only Lumia 925. As it turns out, however, you can get the Lumia 928 working on a GSM network too.

Reddit user volvoshine is reporting that a Lumia 928 worked on AT&T and T-Mobile’s networks after adding the proper access points. That works because Verizon’s phones come with unlocked GSM connectivity for roaming purposes, but there are a few caveats. Read more »

After some short, fast-paced ads with upbeat music, Apple went back to its roots with slower, more emotional ads for the iPhone 5 with the last one. Well, now, there is one more. Whereas the previous ad concentrated on the camera functionality of the iPhone, the new one focuses on the music experience.

As with the previous one, the entire ad is practically wordless with just some simple, soothing music playing in the background. We see people enjoying music on their iPhones in a variety of ways, from using the iconic white earbuds to loudspeaker, sound docks and even DJ consoles. In the end, you get a simple message: ‘Every day, more people enjoy their music on the iPhone than any other phone.’ Read more »

HTC might be having some trouble lately, but that doesn’t stop it from caring for the early HTC One adopters. The first batch of the flagship suffered delays due to some production shortages, which were recently overcome.

If your HTC One order was delayed because of those production hiccups but you didn’t give up on the One, HTC will soon reward your patience with a $25 Google Play voucher. Read more »

Nokia thinks its flagship Lumia 92x range has the best cameras in town and the Finnish company can often be heard bringing up how awesome their snappers are. The latest video shows off the Lumia 928 (that’s Verizon’s xenon and AMOLED packing 920 version) and pits it against the Apple iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4.

The Nokia Lumia 928 camera has several things to brag about, including Optical Image Stabilization, HAAC mics and low-light performance. We’ve seen it take flight, but this video focuses on the low-light photos. Read more »

The bright-colored BLU Life Play is the most affordable member of the recently launched Android smartphone series by the Miami-based manufacturer. Priced at only $229 with no contract, the dual-SIM handset offers tremendous value without heavily skimping on the hardware specs.

Like the BLU Life View and the BLU Life One, the entry-level Life Play features a MediaTek MT6589 SoC with 1.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU, a PowerVR Series5XT series GPU, and 1GB of RAM. Read more »

The description of an update for the Samsung Watch ON app in the Google Play Store suggests the company is working on a new addition to the Galaxy S4 family – the Galaxy S4 Mega.

As you can see in the excerpt in the screenshot above, the Galaxy S4 Mega is put next to the Galaxy S4 mini and the Galaxy S4 Active (those are also not officially announced by Samsung). Read more »

The LG Optimus G Pro made its way officially to the United States, so we managed to spend some quality time with the Yankee version of the Korean flagship. The smartphone is exclusively offered by AT&T for $199.99 with a two-year commitment.

As far as specs go, the US LG Optimus G Pro is practically identical with the Korean version which we extensively reviewed, save for the omission of FM radio. Highlights include a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 SoC, 5.5” 1080p IPS display, 13MP camera, as well as every trick from the playbook of today’s crop of Android flagships. Read on to find out what’s different about the US model. Read more »

Having just wrapped up our full review of the Samsung Galaxy Fame, we’re ready to share with you the results of our extensive battery performance test.

The Fame is the latest budget-range offering from Samsung, featuring a specs sheet that is far from impressive, but an Android Jelly Bean build that should hopefully result in increased performance from the 1300 mAh battery compared to last years’ Gingerbread devices. Let’s take a look. Read more »

Fresh of its record-setting sales start of the Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung is promising to address complaints regarding the low user-available memory of its flagship.

Currently, the 16GB model has just over half of that available to the user – the rest being taken up by preinstalled apps and Samsung’s custom Android launcher, TouchWiz. Read more »

The Nokia Lumia 925 recently took over the reins from the 920 as the new WP8 flagship. The Lumia 928 is similar but it’s a Verizon exclusive. Anyway, the 925 brings a much needed redesign of the body, a new AMOLED screen and several software improvements.

Just to be clear, the Lumia 920 didn’t need a redesign in terms of looks – it’s the thickness and especially weight that needed work. It weighed 185g, 2g heavier than the Samsung Galaxy Note II, which has a screen that’s a full inch bigger. Dropping to 8.5mm thickness from 10.7mm is a welcome change as well. Read more »

With a 5” IPS LCD display, the BLU Life One sits above the entry-level Life Play, and below the phablet-proportioned Life View in the freshly launched smartphone series from the Miami based manufacturer. Given the increasing popularity which the 5” Android smartphones enjoy lately, the dual-SIM BLU Life One is likely to generate the most interest from potential users.

Save for the smaller display, the BLU Life One packs the same spec sheet as its bigger brother which we previewed a couple of days back. Read more »

Today, many of us woke up to see a new update available to Angry Birds Seasons. This one is called Abra-Ca-Bacon and we already told you it was coming a week ago.

We hope you’ve watched the update’s teaser last week. If not, well, you can already have a go at the real game yourself. Today’s topic however, is the appointment of the YouTube star, iPad magician Simon Pierro as an Official Angry Birds Magician.

And the today’s release of the Abra-Ca-Bacon update more than anything warrants the release of one of the special iPad Magic videos he’s known about. Read more »