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The Sony Xperia SP takes a seat in front of our camera

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The Sony Xperia SP, which we got for a quick hands-on last month, has finally arrived in our office.

We’ve decided to take some quick snaps of it before our review monkeys take it away. Take a look! Read more »

Google X phone goes through the AnTuTu benchmark, flaunts Android 5.0.1

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The purported Motorola Phone X might be called simply “Google X” as an AnTuTu score card suggests. The card, which emerged today, gives us a glimpse of what to expect from the first Google flagship designed by Motorola.

Additionally, the benchmark reports that the device is running Android 5.0.1. This gives everyone a tiny bit of hope that the next Android iteration would be ready for prime time at Google I/O 2013 in May. Read more »

All but a few Keon phones gone after GeeksPhone’s new Firefox OS handsets sell out in a few hours

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Yesterday saw the launch of the first two Firefox OS phones, the Keon and Peak from GeeksPhone. There were some questions just how much demand there will be for yet another OS on the market and if this launch is any indication, the answer is “enough.”

The stock of the two phones ran out just a few hours after they went on sale yesterday, though the numbers sold were not announced. Still, much like other GeeksPhone handsets, these are primarily oriented towards devs, so even if there weren’t that many phones at least it shows good developer interest. Read more »

Apple announces WWDC 2013, learn all about iOS 7 and Mac OS X 10.9 on June 10

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Apple has just announced the annual Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off on June 10 and continue through June 14.

The WWDC 2013 will be held at Moscone West in San Francisco. The tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10AM PDT. Read more »

A custom kernel lets you turn the HTC One logo into a third capacitive button

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The conundrum with the HTC logo on the One smartphone is now over – it can indeed be turned into a third capacitive button thanks to a custom kernel.

XDA developer tbalden has found a way to map the company’s logo, and has shared the kernel with all HTC One users willing to get their hands dirty. Naturally, you need to get your One unlocked, rooted and then swap your stock kernel with the modified one. Read more »

Nokia shows off the new Asha 210 on video, talks WhatsApp and social networking integration

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Nokia has just announced the phone it teased this Monday: the new Nokia Asha 210. It’s a feature phone with a hardware QWERTY and a taste for social networking. The 210 is the first phone with a dedicated WhatsApp button, which will be swapped out with a Facebook button in some markets.

Nokia released a hands-on video that goes over the headlining features of the Asha 210. For example, all 210 phones will come with WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter integration regardless of what function the hardware button has. Read more »

Swype comes out of beta, available on the Play Store for a dollar

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After what seems like an eternity, Swype keyboard for Android is now finally out of its beta stage and available for download on the Google Play Store. The app is currently priced at an introductory price of $0.99.

For those who don’t know, Swype pioneered the sliding gesture-based typing method on phone keypads back in 2010. Since then this method of typing has been incorporated by several other keyboards, including the popular SwiftKey, and even built-in to several phones as standard. Read more »

Sony Xperia ZL arrives at HQ, we take it for a spin

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Sony Xperia ZL has landed at our office. It’s the not-so-tough Xperia Z sibling, powered by the same hardware platform and running on identical Android version with the same custom UI (launcher).

The Xperia ZL may not be water or dust-proof, but offers a few extra goodies over the Z model – a hardware camera key, an infrared port, а smaller footprint and a much better grip, thanks to the textured rear panel. Read more »

Navifirm+ workaround lets users download using caches despite closure

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Yesterday, Nokia finally went through with its long-coming plan to disallow unauthorized users to download from their online repository for firmware updates, Navifirm+.

It has since been revealed that users who retained their Navifirm+ caches are still able to download updates from the repository. Read more »

Google Street View now covers more than 8 million kilometers in 50 countries as Hungary and Lesotho join the fun

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Today is a special day for the Google Maps team as Street View has become available in 50 countries with the launch of the service in Hungary and Lesotho.

As it also happens, Google is also releasing its biggest Street View update ever, expanding the coverage in France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore and Thailand and updating over 563,270 kilometers with new imagery. Read more »

Google 4 times safer than Bing, a new study shows

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According to a study by German Security firm AV-TEST Institute Google is a safer search engine than Bing. The study spanned across 18 months and included more than 40 million search results (read sites) and pit together Google, Bing and others like the popular Russian search engine Yandex.

Microsoft’s Bing delivered more than four times as many infected with malware websites than Google. The chart above shows the results – from almost 11 million results on Google around 272 were infected, while the same number of search results on Bing contained 1285 potentially dangerous pages. Read more »

The Sony Xperia E battery life test is complete, check out the scores

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Having finalized our review of the Sony Xperia E, we’re ready to show you are battery test results from the single-SIM member of the Sony Xperia E family.

The Xperia E features virtually the same hardware as its dual-SIM counterpart – a 3.5-inch HVGA display, a 1 GHz single-core CPU, and a 1530 mAh battery. It does, however, run on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and doesn’t have the extra SIM card to drain it. Read more »

Google Glass to hit retail in 2014, let you take photos with a wink

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Google has given Glass sets to a select few and hasn’t really revealed much about its market availability thus far.

Speaking to Radio 4 Eric Schmidt has finally confirmed that Google Glass will hit the retail shelves next year (that narrows it down) but hasn’t said anything about pricing. A number of developers have been given the option to pre-order Glass at the staggering $1500, but that doesn’t look likely as final pricing. Read more »

32GB version of Xiaomi Mi-2S sells out in just 45 seconds, 16GB version still available in China and new Hong Kong store

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We have some good news and some bad news for Xiaomi fans. The good news is that the company has finally started expanding market availability and now sells its phones in Hong Kong, too. Now for the bad news – it’s still hard to get one as 200,000 Xiaomi Mi-2S units sold out in just 45 seconds.

Xiaomi is also planning to bring its smartphones to Taiwan, but it will have to start making bigger batches to meet the demand. Read more »

Android Key Lime Pie repotedly delayed, won’t make it in time for Google I/O 2013

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According to a trusty source inside Google, Android Key Lime Pie is going to be delayed by 2 to 4 months, and won’t make it in time for the Google I/O 2013 conference.

The report comes from GadgetTronica, who mention that the reason for the delay isn’t so much in the development of the OS update, but rather Google trying to give OEMs a chance to get as many of their phones to Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean as possible. Read more »