The Nokia Lumia 830 has appeared in leaked pictures online, but reports it'll be a budget WIndows Phone 8 handset are rather unlikely.
Images appeared on Chinese website WPDang showing the Lumia 830 in five different hues, but precious little information accompanied them (and WPDang has a hit and miss reputation with leaks).
Some have suggested the Lumia 830 could be the Windows Phone 8 successor to the Nokia Lumia 710, however that seems pretty unlikely – our money is on a region specific version of the 820.
The evidence? Nokia has already said it's naming process would be more transparent: lower numbers at the start would mean cheaper handsets, so beginning with an '8' wouldn't make it any lower-priced than the current 820.
Is that an HTC?
If the handsets in the photos are Lumia 830, then it looks like Nokia will be moving slightly away from the design is used for the Lumia 820, as it looks more like the HTC 8X for the Chinese market.
There hasn't been any word from Nokia about its future Windows Phone 8 devices, but we can be pretty sure more models will be entering the market early next year.
TechRadar will be in attendance at CES and MWC in the first couple of months of 2013 to bring you all the latest mobile news live as it happens.
Pocket for Mac is officially released, and makes viewing multimedia easier, faster, and more refined for those saving on the go.
From commuting to appointment waiting to leisure, people are always looking for different ways to kill time by reading, viewing, and saving things from the Web. Read-it-later apps like Instapaper and Readability have dominated the market, but Pocket — formerly Read It later — continues to push ahead and win over users with its simplicity. If you’re one for saving articles on top of multimedia, Pocket may be your best bet at a beautiful way to save webpages for later viewing, complete with a tagging system to help organize your links. Now that the app’s come to the Mac platform, you can sync your iOS or Android accounts so saved pages can be viewed on-the-go, or saved on your mobile device to be read back on your desktop.
Pocket for Mac is as intuitive an app as you can imagine when it comes to saving pages. To get started, simply copy the link of the webpage you’re trying to store, and click File > Save Item from Clipboard, or shortcut Command+S. Your list of saved pages displays on a vertical screen to the left of the Pocket window, with the content on the right when you select.
Neat additions to the Mac version of Pocket is definitely the one-key shortcut, such as A for Archive and F to Favorite. You can also tag each page so they’re easier to search the more you accumulate saved links. Videos also translate nicely onto Pocket, especially if you already have Flash installed on your Mac. The app allows you to view the video straight out of its interface, otherwise requesting that you download necessary plug-ins to play multimedia. I personally haven’t run into file type errors, as most publications will post videos from YouTube or Vimeo anyway, and those seem to work just fine.
If you want to share a link after already viewing the content, the Item > Share button also does a good job of sending the item out to Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, and Buffer. It’s even got a tweet attribution when you send it from Pocket, which is a small but useful touch.
Overall, Pocket does a good job recognizing pictures in an article, article link, headline, byline, and publication. One function I wish was available is the ability to rename files, such as a photo I saved from a blog that didn’t have a get an assigned name, according to Pocket. Between constantly traveling and attempting to save things to read later, Pocket makes a nice alternative for those who enjoy minimal design with multimedia capability, and the willingness to learn some cool shortcuts and make saving for later quick and painless. Pocket for Mac is available now for free via the App Store.
Staff at a store in England have become so annoyed with people talking on their mobile phones at the cash register that they're now refusing to serve them.
The County Stores in south-west England says on its website that visitors will be able to find, among its many offerings, “a bakery, our delicatessen counter, a small and friendly butcher, quality chocolates and coffee.” They’ll also find a notice informing them that should they approach a cash register while talking on a mobile phone, they won’t be served.
Staff at the store, which has been in business since 1836, have become so fed up with distracted customers yakking away on their handsets that in the end the notice seemed like the only solution.
“Quite simply, if someone’s on their phone, we’ll serve the next person,” store assistant Sharon Kidd told the Daily Mail. “People refusing to hang up when it’s their turn to be served is happening increasingly, and…..the queue can get quite long.”
Kidd said that on the whole that the policy has been well received by customers, with only one or two visitors getting upset after being ignored.
The owner of the store, Hugh Duder, understands his workers’ disgruntlement at visitors who appear unable to take a break from their mobiles, saying, “It’s disrespectful to be on the phone when you want to get served, and the counter assistants shouldn’t have to put up with it.”
The store isn’t first in the UK to adopt such a policy. Earlier this year Darren Groom, owner of a coffee shop in Norwich in eastern England, decided to “strike a blow for basic manners” by putting up a sign indicating that he would refuse to serve customers talking on a phone.
Groom explained that he’d become fed up with people expecting him to be able to lip read their order.
“In the shop we need to ask a few questions, like whether they’re having it in or taking it away, whether they want whole milk or not, sugar or not,” he told the BBC, adding “When people come in we like to say ‘hello’. It’s nice if people respond to that. They should have the basic manners to converse with us.”
In the case of retail stores, it’s possible the issue of customers talking on their phone while at the cash register is a bigger annoyance than many people realize. However, beyond sticking up notices, there’s little staff can do. If only cell phone jammers weren’t illegal….
Harnessing the power of mobile smartphones to bring about public humiliation, a digital newspaper in Russia is going after poor drivers.
Created by an online newspaper in Moscow called The Village, people within Russia can use a mobile application called Parking Douche to inform the public about poor drivers that like to park on sidewalks or other areas that aren’t acceptable for parking a vehicle. After someone downloads the application to their Android smartphone, they can start taking pictures of a driver that’s parked their vehicle illegally. The application requires the person to take two pictures of the vehicle. The first picture should be a wide view to demonstrate the car owner’s poor parking skills and the second picture should be a close up photo of the driver’s registration plate.
The application automatically converts the picture of the registration plate to a text field and asks the smartphone owner to check the validity of the registration plate number. In addition, the user can select the exact color of the car using a color field on the touchscreen as well as the general body shape of the car. Using GPS within the smartphone, the exact location of the parked car is also noted by the application.
After uploading all the data to the newspaper, people that live in the immediate area will start to see pop-up advertisements on The Village and other partner sites. While reading an article, a pop-up advertisement shows a replica of the car’s design and color in addition to the exact registration number on the vehicle’s plate. The caption reads “This parking douche annoys you on this site like he does on ‘Street Name’.“
The Village then encourages people to share the poorly parked car on Facebook to get rid of the advertisement. In order to avoid annoying readers of the newspaper that don’t live in the immediate area of the illegally parked car, the advertisements are specifically localized by IP address. Only people living in the immediate area will see the advertisement. Due to requests from people in countries like the United States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom, management at The Village has made the application open-source software.
AT&T puts control right at user's fingertips with MiFi Liberate, the first mobile hotspot with a touchscreen.
Not too many years ago, people would joke about how everything has a camera built into it. But since everything also has a touchscreen nowadays, wouldn’t it make sense if touchscreens were the new camera? Wouldn’t that be the gadget everyone needs to own? Well, that seems to be the rationale behind AT&T latest device: the MiFi Liberate, the mobile provider’s first ever hotspot device decked out with touchscreen capacity.
The MiFi Liberate, developed by Novatel Wireless, can connect up to 10 devices to AT&T’s 4G LTE network. Those devices can then be managed right from the MiFi Liberate’s 2.8-inch color screen. From the MiFi Liberate, you can control various functionalities, such as monitoring data usage, changing networks, and editing the device settings — straight from the touch interface. Users will also be able to add extra memory space with MicroSD cards. AT&T is promising about 11 hours of battery life in continuous use.
There are currently no pricing or availability information for the MiFi Liberate, and it’s something AT&T may want to move quick to announce. It’s only a matter of time before a company releases a WiFi hotspot with a larger touchscreen and more functionalities, which will prompt the competitive process to continue until someone realizes they’re just creating a tablet that acts as a WiFi hotspot.
The new screen is a lovely thing, but its extra height isn't ideal for smaller hands
It seems that for many people, the iPhone 5 is a disappointment - so what's missing? We asked for your suggestions and scoured the online reviews, and the results are below: it's your ultimate iPhone 6 wish list.
iPhone 6: design
Many of you weren't sold on the iPhone 5's design. For some of you the taller screen was odd - it "looks strange at best," said nebulaoperator - and for others it simply wasn't big enough.
Lions87a reckons even 4.5 inches would be too little: "popular phones like the Galaxy S2 and S3 have shown that people are pretty happy nowadays to accept bigger than what the iPhone 5 is currently offering."
Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, influential tech journalist Andy Ihnatko suggests that taller isn't necessarily better. "The benefit of bigger screens is almost entirely in their increased width, not their length," he writes. "A wider keyboard is easier to type on. Books, web pages, and emails will have wider margins and they'll be more comfortable to read."
John Gruber of Daring Fireball agrees that bigger isn't always better, but he's not a fan of wider, either: while he says that "navigating the full screen while holding the iPhone in one hand is worse," rivals' wider screens mean it "really is far more difficult to do anything on them one-handed, including typing."
iPhone 6: processor
No surprises here: we had plenty of people telling us that rival firms' processors have more cores. However, as Lions87a pointed out, "If the iPhone 5 or Nokia 920 can run their OS without any lag or delay, and delivers a flawless experience, and the Galaxy S3 does the same with a quad-core, then the number of cores, and the speed of the cores is irrelevant. The argument turns into 'which operating system is best?'"
Did someone say operating system?
iPhone 6: operating system
iOS has been around for a while, and for many it's getting stale. "I don't think anyone can deny that the
UI needs a refresh when you see widgets and live tiles on competitors' phones," says Vincennes, while Tubemonkey2000 says that "the current [UI] is so tired and old it makes it seem really basic, sort of like a kids' toy."
Our own Gareth Beavis agrees, arguing that "there are so many tweaks Apple could make to its OS to turn it into more of a powerhouse – icons that update with information, or extending the widgets in the notification bar beyond weather and stocks... Apple is taking things very slowly on this front."
iPhone 6: price
iPhones have never been cheap, but in a world of credible - and cheaper - competition they look pricier than ever. Or maybe it's because the iPhone's price has gone up. Saltire is "surprised no-one has mentioned the price increase for the 16GB model", while Gareth Beavis says that "we simply cannot see how a 16GB model can cost £529 / $199, but to double the memory will cost an extra £70/ $100 with no other changes to the design."
There's no doubt that you pay more for the materials, fit and finish of an iPhone than you do for, say, a plasticky Android handset, and not everyone thinks that's worth it.
"£529 for a phone that is no better than my six month old Android shows the arrogance of Apple," Alastairmack says, while Beavis points out that when you consider contracts, "it's far and away the most expensive in the shop, and most of the time you don't even get unlimited data."
iPhone 6: features
NFC has, possibly unfairly, been dubbed "Not For Commerce" (or more saltily, "No Effing Customers"), but for many it's the most obvious omission from the iPhone 5 - "not because of the technology itself," says Fmartins, "but to really give the critical mass contactless payments need. Plus, I would love to use the phone as my Oyster card."
For Fmartins, that would be good for everyone: while s/he isn't an iPhone fan, "it would have been nice seeing Apple push the envelope again so that I could benefit on [a] Lumia down the line." Gareth Beavis agrees. "It's not quite there yet in terms of market penetration for payments, but the world's largest network of accessories could definitely have made use of it for making ever cooler docks and cases," he says.
Other suggestions included more LTE bands, which we're sure we'll get next year when other UK 4G networks launch; expandable storage - not something we imagine Apple doing when it can flog you iTunes Match and/or get you to pay a small fortune for the 32GB model over the 16GB - and brighter, more saturated screens, although given the improvements to the iPhone 5's screen that one's largely a personal preference. Oh, and of course you'd like Apple to fix Maps too.
Maps has the potential to be a superb and very useful app, but it needs some work
iPhone 6: reception
No, not antennas - they seem fine this time - but the critical reception. As Lusky79 says, even without cock-ups such as Maps, any new iPhone is going to be disappointing: "Even if Apple had all the suggestions [here], it would still seem mediocre because the revolution was the original iPhone and the other, similar, smartphones that followed." As Nenslo put it: "What the iPhone really needs is Steve Jobs."
Anything else?
Hit the comments to add your wishes for the next iPhone.
Flagship smartphones sell by the millions and that's a given. Some 2 million people pre-ordered the new iPhone 5 and the total number of sold devices in the three days since the launch on September 21 has reached and surpassed 5 million units.
Sales predictions were a bit higher (standing at around 8 million units), but as you know, market predictions are not what you would call an exact science.
Last year the iPhone 4S sold in over 4 million units over its first weekend of market availability, while the iPhone 4 sold just 1.7 million units in its debut weekend back in 2010.
Yet again however, the demand has exceeded the initially available supply and some of the people who made pre-orders will have to wait for their deliveries until October.
The iPhone 5 launched on September 21 in 9 countries - the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the UK.
Another 22 countries will get it come September 28. The list includes Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
The total number of markets where the iPhone 5 is available should reach 100 by the end of the year.
As usual, tempting carrier deals aside, the iPhone 5 remains one of the most expensive smartphones on the market with official SIM-free prices in Europe running around the €670 mark.
If you are interested whether you would be able to make use of the iPhone 5 high-speed LTE connectivity in your country, check out our list. If you are not among the lucky ones, you can still count on HSPA, of course.
The mobile world has changed a lot since Nokia last put out a phone that truly wowed large amounts of people. Its tie in with Microsoft spawned some half decent handsets but despite Nokia's best efforts, the world was never truly set alight.
Cue Nokia World 2012 and the announcement of the Nokia Lumia 920. Make no mistake, this is more than a big deal for both Nokia and Microsoft, with both having a lot riding on their respective contributions. Many see it as Nokia's big throw of the dice: make Windows Phone 8 into a top OS and the rewards are huge... fail, and things look ropey for the Finns.
So the big question on everybody's lips is: just how does it shape up against its two current biggest rivals, the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the HTC One X?
(We'll be adding in the iPhone 5 when it's launched on 12 Sept - it's not really fair to use the iPhone 4S at this point)
OS
The Nokia Lumia 920 comes running Microsoft's latest version of its mobile OS, Windows Phone 8, complete with its interactive "Live Tiles" interface.
Both the One X and the Galaxy S3 run Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with custom user interfaces; Touchwiz on the S3 and Sense 4.0 on the One X. Samsung has said that it plans to update the S3 to 4.1 (Jelly Bean) very soon. HTC has also promised its arrival, but has yet to name a timeframe.
HTC One X: Ships with Android 4.0 overlaid with HTC's newest version of Sense
Processor
Nokia have opted for a dual core Snapdragon S4 chip clocked at 1.5GHz, with Nokia standing firm on its belief there's such a thing as too many cores.
Why, might you ask? As Nokia puts it, "why put something you don't need at the expense of battery life?". However on the 'bigger is better' side of the fence, Samsung pops one of its Exynos 4412 1.4GHz quad core's in to Galaxy S3, whereas HTC plumps for the quad core 1.5 GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 chip.
However, in the US all three run the same Snapdragon S4 chip - so the power is pretty even.
Screen
In terms of size, all three devices are rather similar and rather large, with the Lumia 920 measuring in at 4.5 inches, the Galaxy S3 at 4.8 inches and the One X at 4.7 inches.
All three look great, with the Samsung's 306ppi being pipped by the HTC's 312ppi. On the Lumia 920, Nokia have put in 'Nokia PureMotion HD+' which is supposedly better than HD in terms of screen performance. It certainly looks great, but we still can't feel we weren't as 'wowed' as we were when looking at the Super AMOLED HD of the Galaxy S3.
Storage
In the Lumia 920 you'll find 32GB of on board storage, backed up by SkyDrive, Microsoft's cloud storage system.
The Galaxy S3 comes with microSD support on top of Samsung's 16/32/64GB internal drive, whereas HTC decided to only go for 32GB internal storage. However, the former comes with 50GB of Dropbpox of storage, and the latter 25GB from the same source.
Google users also have access to Google Drive, which is Google's answer to the cloud storage question.
Samsung Galaxy S3: Samsung's device comes with 3 different storage size options
Camera
Nokia is playing its trump card in the camera department. Long being known for fantastic camera devices, with Carl Zeiss lenses, Nokia is bringing its PureView technology first seen on the Nokia PureView 808. However, this is placed over the top of a more modest 8MP sensor, with a 1.3MP front facing camera.
It does come with a wealth of fancy features, such as being able to plug in camera apps and optical image stabilisation to help stop blur when you least want it.
Both the Android devices also come with 8MP rear sensors, burst mode for millions of photos per night out, and the HTC also has a 1.3MP front sensor. Samsung, however, has a 1.9MP sensor.
Connectivity
Believe it or not, being the latest breed of smartphones, all three devices come fully loaded with every type of connectivity; 3G/HSDPA, Wi-Fi, (for fast internet browsing on those mega screens), Bluetooth (4.0 on the Galaxy S3 and One X, 3.1 on the Lumia 920), GPS and NFC.
Near Field Communication: With NFC gaining traction, mobile payment is becoming more prevalent
Dimensions and weight
The Nokia Lumia 920 is the shortest phone at 130 x 70.8 x 10.7mm,but the heaviest at 185g. Samsung manages to squeeze in at a similar size of 136.6 x 70.6 but is the thinnest at 8.6 mm, and weighs only 133g.
The HTC, more akin to the Galaxy S3, is the narrowest and lightest at 134.4 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm and 130g.
Battery
Being unreleased, we have yet to have any battery comparisons for the Nokia Lumia 920, but with only a dual core processor, and a 2000mAh battery, we'd be surprised if it wasn't very competitive. Samsung debuted a lot of nifty battery saving tech in the Galaxy S3, and its 2100mAh (removable) battery managed to last a lot better than the 1800mAh (sealed in) offering of HTC.
Early verdict
We can't yet say for sure, as the Nokia Lumia 920 hasn't been released yet, and will hit American shores first in Q4 2012.
That said, Nokia seems to have a device that will continue the strides that the original WP7 Lumia phones made.
As for the other two, both are superb devices in their own right, garnering 4.5 stars each. Maybe you should check out the Samsung Galaxy S3 and HTC One X reviews to keep yourselves going until we bring your the web's most in-depth Nokia Lumia 920 review.
September just got even busier, people. HTC has announced its own event in New York City on September 19th, thus joining the likes of Nokia, Motorola, and Apple as yet another major player to announce a hot new product this month.
Currently, there's no information on what is about to break cover. Our guesses range from a Windows Phone 8 handset, through a 10" tablet, all the way to a proper Android flagship. More than one product being announced is also likely given how quiet HTC has been recently.
In any case, we will be covering the event live from the spot, so you'll get the full scoop as soon as we get it. Be sure to stick around to find out.
