The Samsung Galaxy S III mini tries to follow in the footsteps of its big brother and now its in the "getting new color versions" phase that the S III went through a while back.
The Galaxy S III mini launched with the standard White and Blue color options but a brochure shows that three new color options will be added next month in Taiwan.
The new colors are Red, Black and Grey, almost matching the color choices for the big Galaxy S III (which also has a Brown version and a special La Fleur paint job).
The Galaxy S III mini is priced at 9,900 Taiwanese dollars ($340) and will become available in Taiwan starting in February. There's a promotion too - people who buy an S III mini before the end of March will get a matching leather Flip Cover.
There's no info on when the new colors for the S III mini will become available outside of Taiwan, but it probably won't be long.
Roll up, roll up - the next generation of mobile processors is here with the Nvidia Tegra 4 blowing its predecessors out of the graphics processing, power-effiency water.
Rocking a frankly mind-boggling 72 custom GPU cores (that's six times the horse power of the Tegra 3), Nvidia is boasting of record setting performance and battery life from the Tegra 4.
It reckons you can up web browsing speeds by 2.6 times, enjoy better app performance and watch up to 15 hours of HD video playback on phones with the new processor.
Power magnet
The Tegra 4 manages this by running a low-power setting during standard use, and PRISM 2 Display tech which reduces backlighting while busting out that high-def imagery (it can even support 4K Ultra High Def graphics).
It puts the quad-core Cortex-A15 to good use, allowing for LTE connectivity (optional chipset for global 4G), HDR photography as standard and superior visuals across the mobile board.
No word when we'll see the first Tegra 4 phones and tablets coming our way yet, but Nivdia itself has already revealed an Android-powered Tegra 4-toting game player dubbed Project Shield - when we can get our mitts on it is another story - we'll keep you posted.
We certainly hope to lay eyes if not hands on Project Shield at CES 2013, so stay tuned.
A thief who entered a Microsoft facility in Silicon Valley over Christmas wasn't in the least bit tempted by any Surface tablets or Xboxes on show, choosing instead to make off with five iPads made by rival tech firm Apple.
Microsoft has reported the theft of a number of electronic devices from its Mountain View campus in San Francisco over the Christmas period, though rather embarrassingly the thief overlooked items such as the company’s Surface tablet, Xbox game console and Windows handsets in favor of five iPads.
The incident, reported in a recent edition of Palo Alto’s Daily Post, involved the theft of two iPad 2s, two iPad 3s and an iPad 4 worth a combined total of around $3000. Police Sgt. Sean Thompson told the local newspaper that the theft was reported last Wednesday although it appears the crime took place between December 19 and 26. No suspect has yet been identified.
You might wonder why a thief would go for Apple products when we can safely assume there was plenty of other tech on show, such as Microsoft’s new Surface tablet. Surely they entered the premises with the intention of filling their loot bag with all manner of Microsoft goods before being distracted by Apple’s offerings. It could simply have been that that the criminal felt they could get a decent price for the iPad on the black market – after all, the level of popularity which Apple’s tablet enjoys among consumers is not in question, whereas sales of the Surface tablet have reportedly been sluggish since its launch in October last year.
Either way, you can imagine Microsoft employees, upon discovering that some items had been stolen, almost wishing to find that some of its own products had been taken too, so that it wouldn’t have to face the humiliating final line in the Daily Post’s report: “No Microsoft products were reported stolen.”
Though some on the web have been questioning the veracity of the story (cutting below), an email to website The Tech Storm from the Daily Post reporter who covered the incident confirms that it did indeed happen.
The international, unlocked variant of the HTC J Butterfly (or DROID DNA as our US friends know it), known as HTC X920e Butterfly, is now available for purchase in Australia.
Currently, the unlocked, SIM-free device is offered exclusively by MobiCity and is sold for 849 Australian dollars, which converts to $891. While currently not available in Europe, this gives us a rough idea how much the X920e would cost in the Old continent.
The HTC Butterfly has a 5.0-inch, 1920 x 1080 resolution, Super LCD 3 with Gorilla Glass 2, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 SoC with a quad-core 1.5GHz Krait CPU and Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB of RAM. With 16GB internal memory (with a microSD card slot), the smartphone sports a 8 megapixel rear camera with 1080p video recording, 2.1 megapixel front facing camera. Connectivity is covered with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS + GLONASS, NFC.
The device is still awaited to break European ground, as HTC has reportedly been struggling to keep up with its production due to the very high demand.
A Samsung webpage detailing some of the features the Galaxy S2 will gain after its update to Android 4.1 has been discovered, indicating the company is still working on the new software.
Back in September last year, Samsung announced it would be updating the Galaxy S2 smartphone, along with several other devices including the Galaxy S3, to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Since then the S3 has received its various updates, but nothing more has been heard on the subject of the Galaxy S2. Most of us know by now that OS updates can take a while to sort out, but we also know that despite manufacturers best efforts, they can be cancelled at the last minute too. Has this happened to the S2?
Although Samsung hasn’t confirmed it, the discovery of a webpage detailing Android 4.1 for the S2 seems to indicate the update is almost complete and will be coming soon. Additionally, the now-aging Galaxy S2 will also get some of the cool new software features seen on the S3, Note 2 and other new Galaxy handsets. The Samsung page has subsequently been replaced with details on the S2’s Android 4.0 update, but SamMobile.com managed to take a sneaky screenshot beforehand.
Here’s the good news first. All the improvements seen with Project Butter – smoother scrolling and faster overall performance – will come to the S2, as will Android’s Easy mode for new users and a Google+ app as standard. Samsung will also squeeze in its Pop-up Play feature, where videos can be watched in a smaller, independent window while doing something else on the phone, plus its Smart Stay feature too. This uses the forward facing video call camera to check when you’re looking at the screen, and keeps it from going to sleep while you are. It’s handy when you’re reading long-form articles or eBooks.
Now for the bad news. According to the page, the update is only going to be available through Samsung’s Kies management software, primarily because it’s estimated to take at least an hour to perform the changeover. Plus, it’s going to eat up an entire gigabyte of internal memory, dropping it from 12GB to 11GB once it’s all done. Ultimately, the pain of having to endure Kies and a little less memory will probably be worthwhile.
Sadly, Samsung hasn’t provided a release date for Android 4.1 on the Galaxy S2, but the appearance of the explanatory webpage could indicate it’s close to release. As usual, when it does arrive it’ll probably be a staggered release beginning with unlocked phones in a few countries, before it eventually makes it onto phones locked to a particular network.
A bold prison break attempt involving a cat, some sticky tape, a mobile phone and a variety of tools ended in failure (are you surprised?) when the feline was spotted by prison guards before it had a chance to make its delivery.
If you were a prisoner hoping to get your hands on a mobile phone to help assist with a breakout, how would you go about it?
A prisoner – or prisoners – in a Brazilian jail thought better of the ol’ file-in-a-cake routine and instead had the novel idea of getting someone on the outside to tape a load of items to a cat in the hope that it would enter the jail unnoticed. It might not surprise you to learn that the plan failed.
Unfortunately for the prisoners, the cat was spotted as it made its way across the grounds of the jail, located in the city of Arapiraca, north-east Brazil.
“An agent saw the cat and went to look at it closely because something about it seemed wrong,” prison guard union head Marcelo Avelino told the O Globo newspaper.
When the prison guards nabbed the feline, they found it had a mobile phone taped to its body, together with a memory card, an earphone, two saws, drills and a number of batteries.
According to a Reuters report about the incident, the cat – which presumably looked like a toolkit on legs – was detained by police.
The authorities are now faced with the tricky task of trying to work out to whom the cat was supposed to be delivering the items. Commenting on the incident over the weekend, a spokesperson for the prison told local newspaper Estado de S.Paulo, “It’s tough to find out who’s responsible for the action as the cat doesn’t speak.” It’s not known if the line was delivered with a wry smile.
One idea might be to line up the prison’s 263 detainees and set the cat free in a twist on the traditional ID parade – it’s bound to head straight to its master. Presumably the mobile phone will also yield some clues.
As for the cat, no charges were brought and it’s now being cared for at an animal center.
[via SMH / Reuters] [Image: AFP/Penitentiary System of Alagoas]
Given the great reception for its standout Olympics app, you might be wondering why the BBC is only just getting round to producing an official Sport app, but the good news is that it's arrived for iOS and only a couple of weeks away from the Android platform.
Currently looking a lot like the mobile site, the app nevertheless comes with some nifty features including customisable content and a handy fixtures calendar.
But it will be the forthcoming functionality that will appeal most, with product manager Lucie McLean explaining to us that video and the ability to add your favourite teams to the navigation are imminent.
The BBC hopes that the app will be a must-have download for sports fans following key events like next year's Commonwealth Games, the tennis at Wimbledon and, of course, next season's World Cup.
Olympic gold
"The Olympics app went really well - we learned a lot, learned what the audience likes and made a decision on how we would approach the BBC Sport app based on how that went," she said.
"We wanted our content everywhere and, for the Sport app, we are taking the a same approach so we can offer that content and augment it with things you can only do or are just cooler with apps.
"We've got plans for lots of native features - this is release one. The Android app is coming in a couple of weeks - and I honestly do mean a couple of weeks, it's almost there."
Only the most popular seven sports get the royal treatment at first, with other sports' content accessible through an in-app browser for now, although that will soon change.
And again
The BBC is mindful that Android users aren't especially pleased to be behind Apple users, but McLean explained the thinking behind the decision and what differentiates the app on the two platforms.
"With Android we are trying to serve much more screen sizes - the main difference is that the navigation is on the left - it looks more Androidy," she said.
"We could have held and launched both together but that would have been quite dangerous launching two big products if there are issues.
"[We said] 'let's get one out there, get some feedback and make sure it works and then get Android out there as well'.
"And then in another few weeks video will be in as well; live video and on demand - that's coming in a few weeks time. It could possibly come at launch for Android but I wouldn't like to say for definite."
Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 support
Users of popular 7-inch Android tablets Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7 will be delighted that their devices WILL be given some love, a priority for the Beeb's team after not getting the Olympics app out for the devices.
"For the Olympics we had this beautiful app built and two weeks later the Nexus 7 came out," added McLean.
"I checked it out on [the device] and it wasn't good enough, so people weren't very happy understandably.
"So this time all of those Christmas-stockinged Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HDs will be supported by the Android app and they look great, as well as the ones in the middle like the Galaxy Note.
"We are just doing the Google Play now but it will work from launch - that's a lot of extra testing but it's absolutely worth it."
