Samsung I9500 Galaxy S4, the Exynos 5 Octa versions of the flagship, didn’t make it to most of the markets and remained the more exotic option. Production hiccups and delays plus the lack of LTE radio in the initial batch was the reason Samsung switched to Snapdragon 600 chipset and make the I9505 its worldwide flagship.

Anyway, the octa-core version followed shortly after the Snapdragon 600 was launched. We already had a meeting with the beast and found it slightly faster in benchmarks than its international sibling, but weaker when it comes to battery life. A new development however, suggests that the scores posted by the Exynos GPU are obtained by cheating and the I9500 real life performance is lower than its scores indicate. Read more »

The tablet competition is as heated as ever. While Samsung is seemingly taking a break from the race by serving us with a less than competitive recent batch of tablets, we are eagerly looking around to see what the competition will have on offer in the second half of 2013. Amazon still hasn’t announced its bid but we are already seeing reports that the company’s next gen tablets will make use of some powerful hardware.

According to a report, based entirely on industry sources and eye-witness accounts, the next generation of Kindles will include three devices in three different tiers. The highest tier – the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 – will sport the impressive 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution (up from 1920 x 1200 px) and a quad-core Snapdragon 800 chipset. Read more »

Earlier this year Samsung released a 30s commercial shot at an airport gate promoting the Galaxy S4′s Smart Pause and Air gestures.

There is now a sequel to this ad, promoting the same features but in a different scenario. This time around the Galaxy S4 has already made it to the airliner. Read more »

Rumors have it that Samsung has its first “true octa-core” CPU in the works. This follows MedaTek’s announcement of the first eight-core processor a few days ago.

The Samsung Exynos 5440 Octa is the company’s latest octa-core CPU at the moment, but technically it isn’t a true octa-core since a maximum of four cores can work at once – either the four Cortex A7 or the four Cortex A15 cores. Read more »

Ubuntu promised to deliver the future of computing, the Ubuntu Edge – a smartphone that can replace your desktop computer. To make it happen, Canonical (the company behind both the Ubuntu Linux distro and the Edge phone) turned to the crowd funding site IndieGoGo, trying to raise $32 million in just 30 days.

It was a beautiful dream (especially the 4GB RAM, 128GB storage and sapphire glass for the screen), but unfortunately it seems to be losing steam despite the good start. Read more »

LG is not keeping the G2, its next Android flagship, a secret. The company even started announcing accessories for the phone, with photos and everything. Okay, it’s a flip cover so not much of the phone itself is visible, but LG could have waited a week until August 7 when the G2 will officially be unveiled.

Anyway, back to the accessory – it’s a flip cover with a window called QuickWindow that lets a small part of the screen show notification and controls from several apps (*cough*). Read more »

If you haven’t experienced it first hand, you must have at least heard about the performance issues plaguing the first generation Nexus 7 tablet that was launched last year. Although the tablet worked wonderfully when it was released, performance degraded rapidly over the course of a year to a point where it became nearly unusable.

That is about to change now with the advent of the Android 4.3 update because it brings just what the doctor ordered for the Nexus 7 to solve its performance issues: TRIM support. Read more »

The RHA MA450i headphones are the British company’s top end in-ear offering. The headset has been developed to play nice with Apple devices and sports an aluminum construction alongside an affordable price tag – a great combination in my book.

A couple of months ago, I was astounded by the outstanding value which the RHA SA950i on-ear headphones offered for the money. As I am already familiar with Reid Heath Acoustics products, my expectations towards the RHA MA450i are really high. Read on to find out if the headset delivers! Read more »

Nokia is by far the biggest player in the Windows Phone 8 game. However, the Finns doesn’t seem to be too happy with the progress of the latest version of the platform.

In an interview with International Business Times, Nokia’s Vice President of App development, Bryan Biniak has expressed his disappointment over the Microsoft’s approach in developing the Windows Phone operating system. Read more »

LG has released a waterproof edition of its Optimus G soon-to-be-former flagship, and we’ve got it in our studio for a quick hands-on before the full review.

The LG Optimus GJ features IPX7 water resistance up to 1 meter for 30 minutes, as well as a removable back panel and microSD card support. Read more »

Sony and Panasonic have officially announced that they are working on the next-generation optical disc for long-term digital data storage. Both companies are planning to develop an optical disc with storage capabilities of at least 300 GB by the end of 2015.

The specifics of the optical disc, like protection against dust, water, temperature and humidity are the main reasons for Sony and Panasonic to still be investing in the format. Read more »

The Android platform continues its dominance in tablet market with its shipments reaching 24.2 million in the second quarter of 2013. According to a research from Strategy Analytics, Android currently has 67 % of the tablet market, while the Apple owned iOS has declined to 28%. Windows is also on the rise, but has only managed to secure a 4.5% slice so far.

The tablet market has seen a new rise with the overall shipments reaching 36.2 million in Q2, 2013. That’s of course, a significant gain over the same period last year, when 24.6 million tablets were shipped. Read more »

Microsoft has already added the Xbox One original accessories to its Store. If you want to opt for a second Xbox One Wireless Controller you can get one for $60 in the USA or €60 in the EU.

As usual Play and Charge kits are available as well. They cost $25/€25 if sold separately, of $75/€75 if you get them bundled with a wireless controller. Read more »

There are already a few laptops that use Gorilla Glass protection for their screens, but Corning Predicts the market for glass for touch-enabled laptop screens can become as big as the smartphone market so the company announced the Gorilla Glass NBT.

The NBT glass offers the usual advantages of Gorilla Glass – it resists scratches, hides the ones that appear and prevents their propagation. Read more »

Google recently launched its second-generation Nexus 7 tablet and the slate is already available in Google Play Store and several other major retailers across the United States. Google did not announce the launch date of its Nexus 7 2 for other countries, but now the sign-up page of next-gen affordable tablets have appeared in many countries.

It looks like the new Nexus 7 will next hit the stores of UK, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Spain, Canada, France, Australia and India. Read more »