ZTE has been hitting the headlines a lot lately. After surprising everyone by entering the top-five manufacturer list, it was listed yesterday as one of the Windows Phone 7 partners by Microsoft in their Mango launch event. Today they announced that they are already working on a Mango based handset and it will be launched in Q3 in Europe.

Q1 2011 saw ZTE rank as the fifth largest handset manufacturer Read more »

In case you haven’t heard of it, Minecraft has single-handedly become the biggest indie game of the century. Created by Swedish game developer Markus ‘Notch’ Persson in 2009, Minecraft is a completely randomly generated sandbox world that allows players to build out of practically anything they can find. Although the title is still in its beta, as of early February 2011, it had sold over 1,230,000 units and has only been available on PC and Mac, until now.

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The iPhone 4 and iPad 2 may not have a fancy 3D display but that does not mean you won’t be able to view 3D content on them and prove that Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay from the Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble at the EHCI Research Group have come up with a brilliant new app called i3D.

We’d already told you an app like this was in the works and now it’s finally available. It uses the front facing camera on the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 to track the head movements and the angle from the screen of the user and then adjusts the objects on the screen accordingly in real-time, so that it gives a sense of depth to them. And the best part about this is that it does not require 3D glasses at all. Read more »

We mentioned that Samsung Germany recently updated their online store to include a host of accessories for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. This pointed to the possibility of the 10.1′s official release very soon and our suspicions look to be on the money.

Samsung US let out a highly suggestive tweet the other day with a link to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 notification site. Rumor has it that 8 June is the date to mark down in your calendars and if all goes to plan, you should be able to pick up some 8.6mm thick goodness from then on. Read more »

Sony was victimized by hackers again as a Sony Ericsson website in Canada was breached and the personal data of 2000 people was stolen. Also details on another 8500 users were leaked on a Sony Music Entertainment website in Greece.

Among the sensitive information lost were e-mails, passwords and phone numbers. Credit card information wasn’t stolen this time so that’s a high five on that account, at least. Read more »

Another device has arisen to join the ranks of convergence devices, among the likes of the Dell Streak and the Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 5.0, there is now a new 5-inch tablet-phone to add to this unusual lineup.

The Pantech Vega No.5 is a competent machine, not to be confused with its recently released, similarly specced smartphone brother, the Pantech Vega Racer (which for a start has a smaller 4.3″ display). The Vega is chocked full of decent hardware; performance wise it holds a dual-core 1.5GHz (MSM8660) Qualcomm processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM and comes with 16GB of internal memory (plus an SDHC card slot for removable memory). Read more »

Google is preparing to unveil an NFC-based mobile-payment service tomorrow at an event in New York, allowing you to virtualize your cash and pay in stores using your Android phone.

According to sources close to the matter, at first the service is going to be available for testing in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C. If the new mobile-payment service turns out to be a success, a wider roll-out will follow. Read more »

It’s no secret that Microsoft have been working hard on the next Windows installment for some time, but it’s the first time we’ve heard something official about it.

According to Steve Ballmer, Windows 8 will be optimized for “slates, tablets, PCs, a variety of different form factors”. Read more »

HTC has posted today on both its Twitter and Facebook pages that its customers concerns are heard and the company is reviewing its locked bootloader policy.

A locked bootloader means you get stuck on whatever software the provider gives you and you can’t go for that custom ROM magic everyone seems to love so much. It’s like buying a PC and getting stuck with Windows without the option to change to Fedora or Ubuntu (or whatever), only worse. Read more »

Apple’s App Store pioneered a business model that’s set a precedent for the mobile app purchase and download infrastructure. Blackberry have since launched the Blackberry App Store and the Android Market going strong, but in celebration of a landmark 500,000 approved applications, we look back at the achievements the App Store has made to make it what it is today.

The statistics compiled below come courtesy of a collaboration between the app discovery service 148apps, mobile gaming company Chillingo and San Francisco-based app discovery company, Chomp. They’ve found out how much it’d cost you to buy every paid app available and looked into the future too. Take a look… Read more »

Well, if you’ve been following any of the Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 presentation, then you’ve most probably watch Microsoft’s corporate VP, Joe Belfiore, give one of his excellent demos on one occasion or another. Following today’s announcement of the upcoming major update to Windows Phone 7 – Mango or WP7 as it’s now known, there can’t be a better time than watch one of Belfiore’s nice tech demos.

And again, if you’ve ever watched any of his demos, you’d know they are everything but short. This one is no different, however it’s enjoyable and watchable as ever. If you don’t have the time to watch the whole 10+ minute video, you can just check the pointers we’ve left you below and only watch the demo of the feature you care the most – whichever that it. Enjoy! Read more »

One of the new features introduced with the upcoming Windows Phone 7.1 Mango update is the enhanced Bing search. The Bing search app now offers visual, audio and voice searching. Besides these new options, the search is also enhanced with the Local Scout, that cityscape icon you’ll see on the video. What it does is, make your search location-specific, taking into account your vicinities ang giving pririty to local businesses and locations.

That’s not all however. Read more »

One of our readers sent us this video that he shot of the eruption of the Grímsvötn volcano, situated under a glacial lake of the same name in Iceland. The volcano erupted on 21st of May and managed to release more ash in 48 hours than Eyjafjallajökull did during its entire eruption last year, which has earned it 4 (VEI4) rating on the Volcanic Explosivity Index. The volcano is currently busy disrupting air travel in Iceland, Greenland, Scotland and Norway.

The video was shot using Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc in 720p by Thor E. Bachmann. It was taken a mere 1km away Read more »

As a regular Angry Birds player, the question that comes to my mind repeatedly is “What on Earth is the purpose of the green and white birds?!”. However, Rhett Allain of Wired.com has completely different things on his mind. Instead of pondering on something along this line, he has decided to find out whether the launch speed of the birds in the game is constant or on the contrary, it depends on the angle you shoot the bird. You see, in real life, the bird would fly faster if you shoot it straight on rather than up in the sky.

And so he set out to find the answer, with graphs and calculations and other horrifying stuff they use to torture kids in school. Read more »

Dell has launched the spiritual successor to the now defunct Adamo series. The new XPS 15z is claimed to be the thinnest 15-inch laptop on the planet and packs in some serious hardware for the price.

For starters, the body of the XPS 15z is made entirely out of anodized aluminum and magnesium alloy. The thickness is just .97-inch and it weighs in at 5.54 pounds. Now here’s the funny part. Read more »