According to a report emanating from Greece, HTC is working on an octa-core variant of its flagship HTC One handset.
The TechCommunity.gr site is under the impression that a refresh is on the way, that a new version of the critically acclaimed handset also see the memory bumped up to 3GB RAM.
The report shows a purported screenshot from the phone's hardware settings, apparently showing the improved specifications, but it's hard to verify its authenticity.
According to the site, the updated version of the handset will bring 'Clear Audio' tech for improved call and music quality, but aside from that rest of the handset's features will remain the same.
Successor or update?
HTC is no stranger to updating its phones throughout the annual cycle, but to give the HTC One a processing bump at this stage would be a huge surprise.
If the company is indeed working on an octa-core device to rival the Samsung Galaxy S4 (in some regions) then it would appear more likely that HTC will save it up for the One's successor.
It would give HTC a top-line spec improvement to hang the new handset on and would avoid annoying owners of the current handset, who may wonder why an update arrived after just six months on sale.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of the One's successor, if it isn't called the HTC One-Two then its a missed opportunity.
HTC may not be able to supply enough HTC One minis to meet consumer demand, according to one report.
Problems in HTC's supply chain, particularly with the HTC One mini's casing, will soon cause shortages, Reuters reported today.
The HTC One mini's chassis is reportedly in short supply thanks to "design difficulties," the exact nature of which are unknown.
Another source told the site that demand for HTC's miniaturized flagship can't currently be met, despite analysts' expectations that the company plans to ship just 200,000 of them per month.
Mini and max
In TechRadar's HTC One mini review we gave the smaller HTC One a well-earned 4.5 out of 5 stars, calling it "a cutting edge smartphone that takes all the great elements from the world's best handset and crams them into a smaller frame."
We reached out to HTC for comment about any supply chain difficulties, but like Reuters we haven't received a response.
The HTC One mini isn't the only HTC One spin-off up the company's sleeve, if all the recent HTC One Max rumors are any indication.
That enlarged version of the HTC One is said to be a phablet with a fingerprint scanner, but there's been no official reveal yet.
The sand dune teaser image above from a Tweet a few weeks ago has now been confirmed by Nokia as Abu Dhabi, the location for its Oct. 22 Nokia World event.
Aside from naming the city, details are sparse but it's likely the rumored 6-inch screened Lumia 1520 will be unveiled.
The phablet will be the first from the Finnish firm, along with the first to reportedly hold a full HD display and quad-core processor.
The 1520 would also be the first release under new Microsoft ownership which may be hinted at with the hashtag below stating "wayforward."
Nokia goes to Abu Dhabi
Tablets also on the horizon?
A Nokia tablet codenamed "Sirius" is also making the rumor rounds with details claiming the tablet will boast a 10.1-inch Full HD IPS display, 2GB of RAM, up to 10 hours of battery life and will come with 32GB of native storage expandable via microSD.
Perhaps we'll see the Sirius join the Lumia 1520 in the world event announcements - it sounds like a long shot, but it would make sense to unveil a tablet since it's also a first from the company.
President of HTC America Jason Mackenzie posted on Twitter that the Android 4.3 and the latest version of Sense will hit HTC One Developer Edition smartphones starting this week. This will be followed by Canadian HTC One owners by the end of the month.
Since service providers need to give the final go-ahead for carrier branded units, specific dates have not been provided. Mackenzie sent out a second tweet regarding US carrier certification, although this one was even more vague in regards to anything other than "soon."
We're still working hard & optimistic for U.S. carrier certification – stay tuned to @HTCUSA for more news soon.
Mackenzie also updated us on the state of the pending Droid DNA update. The US variant of the HTC Butterfly is slated to get the Sense 5-enabled version of Jelly Bean by year's end, although it will only be getting version 4.2.2.
Regarding Droid DNA. Update and clarification is that DNA customers will get new Sense experiences (w/ 4.2.2) before end of year.
Here's hoping that European owners of the One won't be left high and dry among all the update goodness. We'll post any news on that front as soon as we get it.
Sony announced the Xperia M and Xperia M dual more than three months ago, but until now only the single SIM version was available on the market.
Well, it looks like the wait for the dual-SIM variant, which is yet to make its first appearance is finally over as the Xperia M dual will be hitting the stores by the end of this month. According a tweet from Sony Mobile Russia, the dual-SIM option will cost RUR10,990 (about $345).
Sony Xperia M dual has the same hardware specifications as the Xperia M, but with an extra SIM card slot. The devices come with a 4-inch display of FWVGA resolution and is powered by a dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus chipset clocked at 1 GHz. Other hardware features include 1 GB of RAM, 5 megapixel rear camera, VGA front shooter and a 1,750 mAh battery.
If you looking to know more about the features and the performance of the Xperia M, then do check our detailed review for a complete insight of the device.
Recent rumors suggested that LG was aiming to sell 10 million units of its new flagship smartphone, the LG G2. Now, LG Taiwan official has confirmed that the company has indeed set a target of moving at least 10 million G2 units across the globe.
LG's spokesperson also said that the South Korean smartphone manufacturer is looking to sell 20,000 G2 units per month in Taiwan. LG is aiming at a 5% market share in the overall smartphone market and 10% among the high end devices in that market alone.
LG's target does not look ambitious, especially considering how great the G2 is and the company's recent success in the smartphone market. However, LG might need to step up its game and run a few aggressive marketing campaigns to achieve its goal.
Here's hoping that LG manages to achieve some great sales number with its G2 and starts rubbing its shoulders with market leaders like Samsung and Apple to spur more fire, competition and innovation.
Nokia has once again gone to Twitter to tease its upcoming October 22 event and this time we got to learn its location. The venue will be Nokia World and the place is Abu Dhabi with the date being October 22.
Nokia attached the hashtags #closr, #wayforward and #innovationreinvented to the message. The first teaser showed us skiers in warm outfits on desert dunes with the hashtags #blazing, #stories and again #innovationreinvented.
The most obvious suspect to debut at the event is the Lumia 1520 that goes by the name of Bandit. It's supposed to bring two firsts for the Windows Phone realm - first 1080p smartphone and first phablet.
Samsung has unveiled its latest CMOS image sensor, promising substantially increased light sensitivity. Dubbed ISOCELL, Samsung says its new imager produces photos with higher color fidelity thanks to its improved control of electron absorption.
The company states that all of these enhancements make the ISOCELL CMOS sensor suitable for its upcoming line of smartphones and tablets. As a result, it wouldn't be at all surprising to see the Samsung Galaxy S5 camera feature an ISOCELL image sensor.
The ISOCELL image sensor is the result of consumer desire for increased camera resolution as well as the quality of the photos without making the camera overly large. Pixels need to get smaller while at the same time preserving their performance. Samsung camera gurus compare the ISOCELL technology to FSI and BSI sensors in their inability to preserve pixel quality while shrinking its size at the same time.
Previous sensor technology developments focused on improving the light absorption of each pixel, and have progressed pixel technology from FSI (Front Side Illumination) to BSI (Back Side Illumination) which places photodiode at the top to maximize photoelectric efficiency. While being very effective at the time, this BSI technology also faced limitations in improving image quality as pixel sizes continued to decrease.
The first Samsung image sensor to adopt the new ISOCELL technology carries the model number S5K4H5YB and is an 8MP one with 1.12μ ISOCELL pixel size. The sensor is currently being sampled by Samsung customers and is expected to hit mass production in Q4 2013.
Where are the Google heads planning to drive Android in the next decade?
Cast your mind back to late 2008, when the first Android-powered handset saw the light of day. Obama won his first Presidential election, Apple launched its App Store (the iPhone had appeared the year before), Google announced its own Chrome browser and we got our first look at the company's new mobile OS on the T-Mobile G1.
The Android of 2013 is a world away from that 2008 version, where the Android Market was in its infancy, there were no native video playback capabilities and the G1 had no multi-touch support. But Google is going to have to keep innovating and improving its mobile OS to keep the lion's share of the smartphone market.
We've taken a peek into the future to consider what Android might look like in the year 2020. With new Android monikers now appearing about once a year, its codename should start with an "R" - Rhubarb Pie, Rocky Road or Rice Pudding, perhaps? Or maybe even Rolos, given the tie-up deals Google is putting in place these days?
Here are the four key features we think could play the biggest part in Android's ongoing evolution over the next seven years:
1. Maps in Android in 2020
Apple's Maps app may not have set the world alight when it launched, but it's here now (alongside Nokia's offering), and that means Google needs to up its game to stay ahead. The 2013 Google Maps refresh brought with it a greater level of customisation based on your personal searches, and this will only increase in the future.
With Google Now and Google Latitude tracking your every move, you'll see directions to your favourite pub appear on-screen every Friday lunchtime. If the pub in question has an Android-powered bar installed, you might even find your tipple of choice waiting for you when you arrive.
As for all of the services hanging off Maps, Google is already hiring out the Street View cameras and enabling you to peek inside buildings - you can expect Android 2020 to offer better imagery of most public buildings, as well as tappable info as you move around.
There might even be an option to enable Google to anonymously augment its Street View data with the snaps you take on your phone to provide an even more up-to-date view of the world.
2. Android messaging in 2020
Google has already made its intentions clear with the Hangouts upgrade we got at I/O this year. With Facebook, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Snapchat, Skype et al to battle against, there's no doubt we'll see Google push further into the universal messaging game, covering SMS, email, instant messaging and video calling with tools that are baked into Android.
You won't have to have separate apps for each of these, as the UI will be unified in a way that makes it easy to seamlessly slip between each method of calling.
We might even get Google Voice in the UK by the time 2020 rolls around, though don't hold your breath.
Don't be surprised to see free 5G video calling and texting between Android devices by 2020, with all of your conversations grouped by person rather than platform, and archived and searchable in Gmail.
Eric Schmidt has already predicted that every human will be online by 2020 (no doubt hoping that we'll all have a Google+ page too), and the more people his company can help get connected the better for Google's bottom line.
3. Android payments and security in 2020
Over the next few years our phones will become even more important for making payments, transferring money and verifying our identity (everything from getting through the door at work to logging into Facebook).
The Google Authenticator app of 2020 could work with your device's NFC chip to automatically log you into Gmail when you sit down at your laptop, for example, or pay for your flight when you step on a plane. Apple has Passbook, and Google will want an equivalent in place too.
We've seen tattoos and pills shown off as possible authentication triggers of the future, and Android 2020 will play a big part in proving you are who you say you are, whether it's at a coffee shop or Google I/O.
Basic face recognition is already available, but in the years to come it has the potential to get much more accurate. It might even be joined by fingerprint or retina scanning built into Android's camera app, or at least part of the phone, now that Apple has shown that fingerprint scanning is a viable option with its new Touch ID technology.
4. Android hardware in 2020
Hardware innovations are going to play a big part in Android's roadmap. Besides the obvious smaller, thinner, faster improvements for our phones, bendable screens should be in place in the near future - the likes of Samsung have the tech already in production, and Android will change to adapt itself through scrolling rivers of news, status updates and other notifications.
Ever-changing, ever-optimising displays will be the order of the day, and the batteries and mobile processors of 2020 should be able to keep up.
Google Glass has of course generated plenty of buzz this year, good and bad, as has the rumour of an Apple iWatch to cpmpete with the Galaxy Gear. It looks like the wearable tech revolution is about to take off, and by the time 2020 rolls around this could mean miniature devices on our glasses, wrists and clothing, ready to capture every moment and record every movement.
You won't need to take photos any more, since Google will simply pick out the best pictures from the unedited stream of the day's events. Nor will you need to decide what to eat for dinner - Android 2020 will know what you've been doing today (and what you're probably doing tonight), and can pick out the most suitable foods for you.
Android: the 2020 edition
The only certainty about Android's future is that it has a fight on its hands to stay competitive. Apple's new-look iOS 7 has given Google plenty to think about, not least with its tie-ins with Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Flickr and Vimeo.
Android's continuing integration with Chrome and the desktop/laptop will make for an interesting story too - they're both run by the same man, Sundar Pichai, remember - and perhaps Google's biggest challenge will be to convince us that we can trust it with more and more information about where we are, who we communicate with and the way we live our lives.
Thanks to the guys over Chipworks and their detailed inspection of the board of the iPhone 5s, we now know the full specifications of the chipset of Apple's latest flagship.
As you probably know since day one, the new iPhone 5s runs on a new Apple A7 SoC that utilizes a 64-bit processor. This new CPU turns out to be a dual-core unit clocked at 1.3GHz and uses the latest ARM v8 64-bit cores. Apple's new cores are called Cyclone and the whole SoC is manufactured by Samsung on its 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) process.
The GPU in charge is the quad-core PowerVR (Series 6) G6430, which supports OpenGL 3.0, DirectX 10 and OpenCL 1.x. It's currently among the best of the market and eats benchmarks for breakfast.
Apple kept the RAM amount the same - 1GB, though the RAM used in the iPhone 5s is of the newer LPDDR3 variety, compared to the LPDDR2 embedded in the iPhone 5 and 5c.
Finally, the modem chips are made by Qualcomm. If you want to know more about their model numbers and other embedded controllers just head over to the source link below.
So, as expected, Apple is currently using the latest pieces of available technology for its flagship. There are no other smartphones that utilize the new ARM v8 cores (Cortex A53 and Cortex A57 are yet to come) yet and the new Series 6 of Imagination's PowerVR GPU's is making its official debut, too.
Could this be the end of the plastic era for Samsung?
The Samsung Galaxy S5 is likely to have an all metal body, which if true would finally remedy the flagship lines one real Achilles heel.
We've heard these rumours before, but they've now been given more credence as Barclays analysts have stated that Catcher Technology Co has taken an order to make the chassis for phones in Samsung's Galaxy series, as reported by the Taipei Times.
If you recognise the name Catcher it's because it's the company that already produces the metal casings for Apple's iPhones and the HTC One.
The analysts went on to state that Samsung is likely to order metal casings from Catcher for between 10 and 30 million smartphones, though the final amount won't be confirmed until the first quarter of next year.
Cut the crosstalk
Along with finally making the jump to metal, Samsung has also announced a new CMOS image sensor dubbed ISOCELL. The new sensor isolates individual pixels which minimises electrical crosstalk between them, which in turn leads to higher colour fidelity, for sharper, richer images.
The sensor also has increased light sensitivity, which should allow it to perform well in low light conditions. It's designed for 'premium' smartphones and tablets, so there's a good chance that we'll see it in the Samsung Galaxy S5.
Along with previous rumours that the Samsung Galaxy S5 will feature an iPhone 5S matching 64 bit processor, unibody design and no longer have a removable battery, it looks like it's all change for the flagship Galaxy line, though it remains to be seen how much of this will pan out.
Samsung's Galaxy S5 won't be here until next year, but in the meantime there's always the Samsung Galaxy S4.
The current Galaxy Note 3 sports a huge 5.7-inch, full HD Super AMOLED display covered in a large amount of glass - and that means there's a lot of screen to damage.
Introducing a flexible display to the Note 3 will provide an almost unbreakable screen - handy as this is a big device which can easily slip out of the hand.
Why no bend?
When we hear the words "flexible display" our minds race to handsets which we can fold, roll and generally manipulate any way we want.
But in reality smartphones are still restricted by the solid components under the hood so you won't be moulding the Galaxy Note 3 into any new shapes.
The flexible-display-toting Samsung Galaxy Note 3 release date is pegged for the final quarter of the year, with rumours pointing to a limited production run in October.
