Do you love your white smartphones? Well if you do, The Samsung Galaxy Nexus white edition has been revealed as coming to the UK a whole week before this years MWC (Mobile World Congress), probably as to not take any thunder away or indeed to the Galaxy Nexus against Samsung’s next gen devices.

This technology news follows on from recent rumours regarding an official white Galaxy Nexus release with many speculating it might not even come to the UK.

“After much speculation, we are pleased to announce the availability of the Galaxy Nexus White which follows the great reception the phone has received since it was launched back in November,” said Simon Stanford, Samsung’s UK and Ireland head of the Telecommunications and Networks Division.

Overall this is good news for consumers as the white Galaxy Nexus adds another option available to consumers against Apple’s white iPhone 4S.

Via: T3

©2012 Technology Blogged, News. All Rights Reserved.

Mobile phones – they’ve undergone a strange design path since their inception. From massive blocks of limited ability, through increasingly smaller and smaller frames and then one day, suddenly, they started getting bigger. Arguably starting with the introduction of the first generation 3.5″ iPhone, smart phones have steadily taken over the limelight, driving the screen sizes sky high, questioning the very definition of usability. Enter the HTC Sensation XL, packing a 4.7″ screen on its face. So then, just how big is too big?

Hardware/that screen

Any discussion on the hardware of the XL is likely to be dominated by that screen, which is understandable. But let’s put that aside for just a moment, and talk about the rest of the XL. Well, it’s big. Measuring 132.5 x 70.7 x 9.9 mm mean’s its relatively slim frame feels even slimmer in comparison to its gigantic proportions. Meanwhile, the front of the phone is largely bare, on the white model we were given the front visage is little more than a black expanse, some capacitive Android buttons, a front facing camera (1.3mp, if you must know), a light sensor and the customary silver speaker earpiece. Along the left, a micro-USB charging port whilst the right hand side claims home to a reasonably stiff volume rocker. The top features not only a 3.5mm headphone jack but also a secondary microphone for noise cancellation, you lucky thing. Rounding things off is a slightly protruding 8MP sensor, dual LED flash and speaker on the back.

The entire phone is wrapped in a mixture of white plastic and aluminium which detaches in much the same way as the original, smaller, Sensation. The back plate is closer to a shell than a cover, giving great build quality whilst giving the end user a chance to get at that precious battery. We’re fond of it over here, and well, it works well, despite us being able to find a few tiny creaks on our review model.

Let’s talk about that screen. First things first, it’s huge. So huge you’re going to have to consider just how big your hands actually are. I, with my average-ish hands (okay, they’re a tiny bit small, what of it?) struggled to use the phone comfortably in day to day use, and that’s a problem. Don’t get me wrong, I loved having all that extra screen real estate when browsing the internet, playing games and watching movies but when I wasn’t doing those things, when I was just sending a text or answering a call, it became a burdon to handle.  Which is a shame, because the panel itself is pretty great. Continuing the fine HTC tradition of Super-LCD screens, the XL packs one of its own and it’s several shades of gorgeous with lovely, vivid colours and decent black levels. Sadly, it’s resolution isn’t so much to shout about with a 480 x 800 resolution, equaling to a less than glorious 199ppi, a number which is already old hat, and due to be further overshadowed the the forthcoming wave of hi-res screens. One clear plus though is just how closely the LCD is mounted to the front of the phone, it lends the phone an impressive, high end feel.

Performance/call quality/software/battery

If we had to describe the performance of the XL in one word (believe me, we don’t), it would be capable. That is to say, extremely capable. In day to day operation that tag team of a 1.5 GHz Scorpion and Adreno 205 GPU comes together to power the big screened beast with nary a hint of lag. I loaded up some of my favourite mobile games (Reckless Racing, Zombie Dash) and the XL never once stuttered under the weight of them, true also that while handling every day mobile tasks we noticed just how zippy the phone is. For example, loading this very website with no cache took a darn right impressive 8 seconds (including flash elements) , we could find very little that held back the XL from doing its thing. Quadrant scores came in around the 2100 mark while GPU benchmarking tool brought in a score of 48.7pfs, these should always be taken as a secondary point, at this stage in the mobile game benchmark scores aren’t always a reliable indicator of prowess.

Call quality on the XL was reasonably impressive, those at the other end found us clear and crisp for the most part while we found the earpiece on our end simply average, producing decent sound in a reasonably tinny way. Needless to say though, you’re not going to be struggling to hear people, it just could be better.

Hello, HTC. Once again the Taiwanese giants have loaded their hardware with Sense, their custom mobile skin atop of Android 2.3.5 “Gingerbread”, this is Sense 3.5, bringing all the visual whizz bang of 3D style effects and spinning homescreens that you’ve been crying out for in your life. The continuing problem with Sense is that it just doesn’t make sense anymore, back when Android 1.0 was released, Sense was a beautiful attempt at making Android less ugly, and it worked rather well. As time drove on, and Android versions jumped up quicker than we could count, the entire operating system got prettier and prettier, leading up to the frankly beautiful Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”. In the 2012 mobile landscape, all HTC appear to be doing is putting a pig on lipstick. Sense is not a fashion disaster, it’s just an unnecessary resource hog atop of an already beautiful bit of software.

The larger problem comes with that screen resolution, it’s the same as the HTC Radar and Desire S, both of which clock in at a full inch smaller than the XL. Other than HTC’s special efforts at fitting more information on the screen (the settings panel works very well in this regard) all we’re getting here is a bigger version of what you can see on those other phones with more big icons than you can shake an oversized phone at. Until the XL is updated to ICS, we’re doomed to this kind of super-sized UI treatment, unlike the Galaxy Note which brings more information alongside it’s larger screen.

The XL comes loaded with a surprisingly small 1600mAh, which is even more surprising given just how long the XL lasts on a charge. Now, I wouldn’t go a whole weekend without giving it some juice, but your day to day life shouldn’t be interrupted by too many low battery notifications

Camera

HTC used to be very bad at cameras, then they stopped being very bad. The 8MP camera on the XL should, by all rights, work every bit as well as it’s contemporaries – it doesn’t. We had real trouble getting the sensor to focus properly in almost any lighting situation, large amounts of noise creeped in at almost every level and shots were generally unimpressive across the board. 720p video fared slightly better, but did suffer from large amounts of rolling shutter. Generally, the less said about the camera here, the better.

A small rant on Beats Audio

 The XL is Beats branded, one of the first phones from the joint partnership between Monster Cable and HTC to bring the overwhelmingly popular headphone brand into the mobile realm in a big way. This branding stretches to a animation in the boot up and a red B on the back of the phone, other than that we get a special EQ setting and a set of Beats branded headphones. Firstly, I don’t like Monster Cable. At all. They’re unethical, overpriced and overhyped. Their consumer range of Beats ‘phones aren’t worth the materials they’re crafted from, with awful mids, loose bass and muddled highs, they are enjoyed primarily by consumers who’ve never had the chance to experience good quality headphones. True, the jump from standard iPod headphones or very low end headphones is huge, but to anybody who’s had the pleasure of sampling good quality headphones they’re an abomonation, especially for their hugely over inflated price.

The headphones that come included with the XL, designed to match with white plastic and aluminum, are marketed at one of the main selling points of the XL. “Why buy Beats headphones when you can get some free with your new phone?”, the marketing men ask as they rub their filthy mitts together. Now, obviously, the free headphones we’re getting with our new phones won’t be up to the quality of the normal range, so how do they sound? In a word? Horrible. They are every bit as bad as standard iPod headphones, only with better sound isolation. If you like music, at all, disregard these headphones and move on with your life.

Wrap up

Ignoring the Beats, the XL is a fairly capable mobile. With it’s speed, nice quality screen and good build quality it adds up to a pretty decent package (aside from that abysmal camera), you’ve only to ask yourself. Just how much screen can I actually handle? I fear the XL might be a little too much for most mere mortals to handle. We fear there are better options in the large screen market than the XL, the Samsung Galaxy S2 will serve you much better with a nicer screen, faster processor and thinner frame if you can suffer the plastic build and ugly, ugly skin.

Rating: 6 out of 5 stars (6/10)

©2012 Technology Blogged, News. All Rights Reserved.

Gagging for a bit of Ice Cream Sandwich on your Asus EEE Pad Transformer? Well you wont have long to wait according to Asus, as the update should be rolling out in February. The revelation comes as a sort of mix up and not an announcement curiously, as Asus’s Singapore Facebook page told fans the update would come this week. Naturally, this was a blunder, and the real date for the update had to be revealed after some fans questioned and/or complained.

Via: Engadget

©2012 Technology Blogged, News. All Rights Reserved.

Do you remember the Asus Padfone, a product which saw huge hype in May of last year which we thought may have been launched the Christmas just gone? Well during the months since last April, industry news regarding the tablet-smartphone mash up has been thin, but  now we have some for you and indeed it is good news. Asus themselves are the source of this news and according to them the Padfone will be shown off at this years Mobile World Congress (MWC).

The Padfone, which had some of our readers tweeting their heads off about last year, is said to comprise of a 4.3″ smartphone and 10.1″ tablet. Whether or not the Padfone will run the quad-core CPU as found in the EEE Pad Transformer Prime however begs another question, but we think it might. Roll on MWC!

©2012 Technology Blogged, News. All Rights Reserved.

Technology news. If you thought that google were going to release a Nexus tablet to directly compete with the iPad, you have apparently been wrong as a new report claims the Nexus tablet will in fact directly compete with the low-priced Amazon Kindle Fire. Unsurprisingly, this report comes from the almost-reliable Digitimes, who as usual have stated that sources said something about something, in this case that the 7-inch Nexus tablet will be around sometime in March and will be offered up at a similar price to the Kindle Fire.

“Google will launch the own-brand tablet PC in March-April, featuring a 7-inch panel and Android 4.0 with a price less than US$199 to compete against Amazon”

If these rumors (or sources to Digitimes) do indeed prove to be true / reliable, you can expect the Nexus tablet to ship with an altered version of the Dual core, 1000 MHz, TI OMAP4 as found in the Amazon Kindle, and around 8GB of on-board storage.

Via: Digitimes

©2012 Technology Blogged, News. All Rights Reserved.

Technology news. The Samsung Galaxy Ace is perhaps one of the best budget smartphones on the market right now and that is since its initial release way back in March 2011. Now, however, Samsung has given it a refresh and it all starts in the name; the Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus. Featuring a 3.65-inch (up fro 3.5-inch) 320×480 HVGA TFT touch screen and a single core 1GHz processor (up from 800MHz), the Galaxy Ace Plus comes at a time when expensive dual-core smartphones win the headlines.

From the above, the major update over the original Ace is the processor, which is now 200MHz faster than the original 800Mhz one. This added ooph will allow Galaxy Ace Plus users to perform more system heavy tasks without as much lag as they had previously. As for storage, you are looking at 3GB built in out of the box and yes, it does take microSD cards to fill up with tunes expandable to 32GB.

Aimed at students, young professionals and first time smartphone buyers, the Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus should be available in store within the next 2 months on pay as you go, sim free and pay monthly options. Overall, Samsung’s Galaxy line up keeps on getting better and better and this new update for the Ace makes for a very tempting purchase indeed.

©2012 Technology Blogged, News. All Rights Reserved.

Technology news.Rumours quite literally make the world spin around, and this one as reported by Pocketnow is pretty nice indeed. The low down here is that the image you see above has reportedly been taken by a Samsung Galaxy S III which is quite significant, considering it hasn’t even been announced yet. According to said website, their data for the photograph shows the image was taken by a handset with the model name GT-I9500, which as they put it is the highest number numerically Samsung would have ever used for a handset. Of course, the EXIF data the photo carries is pretty easy to fake, though.

Head on over to the source below for a full size image of the photo.

Source: Pocketnow

©2012 Technology Blogged, News. All Rights Reserved.

Hot on the heels to extend their Nexus brand, Google are apparently in preparation to introduce a Nexus branded tablet in to the market next year according to an interview Eric Schmidt gave Italian newspaper Corriere.it. In the interview, Schmidt let loose that the company is planning on releasing a tablet within the next 6 months and told the newspaper it would be of the highest quality. Specification wise, Schmidt didn’t lead on to note anything of importance, although you can bet money on the Nexus tablet being manufactured by Samsung much like the prior two Nexus branded smartphones.

Overall, we can’t help but think that Google is too late with this one, as steaming in with a tablet with a brand associated with hardcore Android fans isn’t going to budge the boys at the top.

Source: Corriere.it 

©2012 Technology Blogged, News. All Rights Reserved.