Google’s apps for iOS so far have ranged from mediocre to downright lame. A lot of them were just the mobile versions of their mobile site with a slight redesign to fool the users into thinking they are using a proper app and not just a mobile site. But their latest Google Search app changes all that.

The redesign makes the app look completely different and unlike most of their other iOS apps, completely awesome. The best part about it is that it finally feels like a proper app and not just another tab in Safari. Read more »

We’ve got the battery tests results of yet another smartphone to share with you. The HTC Sensation XL will try and protect the honor of the company after the rather disappointing performance of the HTC Radar yesterday.

If you are just looking at the specs, you wouldn’t back the Sensation XL to do too greatly. A 1600 mAh battery and a 4.7″ LCD seemingly put the XL at a disadvantage, but maybe it has an ace up its sleeves. Read more »

The quad-core Transformer Prime is all but official by now but Asus have went that extra distance and setup a dedicated product page for their premium slate over at their website complete with specs and features.

And if you’re a UK resident, not so keen on quad-core and think dual-core is good enough, you’re in luck as the first-gen Transformer just got a special price cut in some retail shops (Best Buy and HMV) for the 16GB model – now starting at £299 (80 quid lower than the launch asking price). The deal is set to expire on December 4 so you’d best hurry up before all the units have been cleaned from the shelves. Read more »

Apple has scored a point in their ongoing court match against HTC. The US International Trade Commission has ruled that the Cupertino-based company doesn’t infringe any of the HTC-owned patents.

Earlier, ITC declared that Apple was, in fact, violating some of the patents that HTC acquired with its purchase of S3 Graphics. However, it was OS X, rather than iOS, which was found in the wrong and Apple has obviously done enough to fix that. Read more »

Nokia Maps v3.08 is now available for download to Symbian Anna and Belle users and is bringing along some goodies you might want to check out.

First off, Nokia Maps now offers four homescreen widgets, also live traffic services, weather service, improved Drive navigation and more. Nokia Maps already offers lifetime free-of-charge voice-guided navigation across 100 countries with downloadable maps and everything. Read more »

The Windows installation process either frustrates people because they know it will take a lot of time (if they know how to do it at all) or intimidates them with the complexity of the procedure. Microsoft are redesigning the process for their upcoming Windows 8 OS to deal with both problems.

You can still do an advanced setup, which will let give you the most control over how the OS is installed, or you can do a streamlined setup, which is started by simply running an .EXE file or via web delivery. Read more »

You may have already forgotten all about the HTC HD2, but the hacking community clearly hasn’t. The Windows Mobile (that’s BC in Microsoft speak) smartphone got its lifetime extended way beyond what its manufacturer expected thanks to the efforts of some indie developers, who keep porting the latest versions of Android to it.

Now, the HTC HD2 is even ready to run the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, long before most Android smartphones can do so. An HD2 ROM based on the AOSP release of Ice Cream Sandwich is available for download and you can try it right now. Read more »

The iPhone 4S has just become the second most popular cameraphone among Flickr users. Hardly a shocker, we can imagine as its predecessor is still the most popular camera on Flickr and that the 4S is miles ahead of it in terms of photo capabilities.

It only took just over a month for the iPhone 4S to go that far, so we can imagine it will be overtaking the iPhone 4 in no time. The iPhone 4S, which we found to be the most capable 8MP smartphone currently around, already has almost half the user base of the iPhone 4, so it’s probably just a Christmas shopping spree away from overtaking it. Read more »

Steve “Cyanogen” Kondik has announced that his extremely popular ROM series CyanogenMod will be coming to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 when his group upgrades their ROM base to Android Ice Cream Sandwich in version 9.

The CM9 (7 is for Gingerbread and 8 for Honeycomb) is already in the works and the CM team expects the first stable versions to arrive early next year. Read more »

Ever since people have gotten their hands on the Galaxy Nexus, we have been hearing reports of the device not supporting the USB Mass Storage (UMS) protocol that allows you to mount the internal memory on your computer. Since this is the first Ice Cream Sandwich device, this peculiarity was attributed to the OS lacking the particular feature. But as Google engineer Dan Morrill explains, that is not the case.

As it happens, Ice Cream Sandwich does support UMS, it’s just that the Galaxy Nexus doesn’t. Instead, it uses MTP or Media Transfer Protocol, which is natively supported on Windows and commonly used by devices such as media players to sync with Windows Media Player. Read more »

So far we’ve put five smartphones through our new battery test, but the HTC Radar is the first to fight under the WP flag. The Mango-running smartphone will give us the first indication on how the Microsoft platform fares against its competitors in terms of power efficiency.

The HTC Radar comes with a 1520 mAh battery and a 3.8″ LCD screen, so it had a reasonable fighting chance. In fact it is one of the most favorable battery-to-screen-estate ratios we’ve seen so far in our test. Read more »

Cameraphone buffs listen up. If you’re eager to snap some quirky hipster photos with your iPhone’s 5MP or 8MP sharpshooter and happen to have $249 bucks lying around this just might interest you.

PhotoJojo offers a three lens dial case for your iPhone 4 or 4S that gives you three cool shooting modes – Wide Angle, Fisheye and Telephoto. It has three coated glass lenses and it’s made out of aircraft-grade aluminum case. Read more »

Tablets are what everyone wants for Christmas and several millions are bound to fly off the shelves in the following month and a half. RIM obviously wants to make sure that their PlayBook will get a proper share of the fun and is even willing to cut down on its profits to achieve it.

The Canadian company just announced that its PlayBook slate will be available for $199 for a limited time in selected US and Canada retailers. That’s certainly makes the PlayBook one of the bargains of the season, even if you consider the limited number of apps available for the QNX-based platform. Read more »

We thought Samsung left the GPS issues behind after they replaced the original Galaxy S as their flagship device, but it turns out that the Galaxy S II has some issues with its GPS connectivity, too. It appears that the units distributed by Vodafone have a faulty GPS configuration file, which prevents them from acquiring satellite lock quickly.

There are several lengthy threads in the Vodafone support forums dedicated to the issue, but the carrier is still unable to come up with a solution. Even the Android 2.3.5 update, which was released just a few weeks ago didn’t address the faulty file. Read more »

Samsung’s Made for Germany Galaxy Tab 10.1N will soon be hitting the German shelves. But before that we have a video for you of the device getting a thorough rundown in a typical Teutonic fashion.

In the video below by NewGadgets.de, we can see the new Galaxy Tab 10.1N first getting unboxed. After spending some time explaining the new design the video moves on to the software and the performance of the device in gaming and web browsing. From there it moves on to benchmarking and finally end it with a comparison with rival tablets. Read more »