Rumor: Nokia’s next Symbian device will also be their last

This coming Saturday will mark the one year anniversary of the historic day when Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new CEO, got up on a stage in London and announced to the world that both Symbian and Maemo were going to be thrown under the bus, and that the future would be all about Windows Phone. One thing Stephen mentioned during that announcement was that Nokia still has plans to sell 150 million Symbian smartphones. That’s recently changed though. Late last month when Nokia reported their Q4 2011 financial results they said … Read more

4 days ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Google steals Apple’s Senior Director of Product Integrity, puts him to work on a secret project

Simon Prakash is a name not too many people are familiar with. According to VentureBeat, Prakash has been working at Apple for the past eight years, with his last title being “Senior Director of Product Integrity”. In other words, his main responsibility was to make sure that Apple’s iPods, iPhones, iMacs, and just about everything else the company sold, came out of the factory looking and feeling like a premium product. Where’s he now? Apparently he’s a Google employee working on a “secret project”. What exactly is that project? We … Read more

4 days ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Windows Phone 8 details leaked: Dual core processor support coming, NFC too

Whoa, Nellie! The guys at Pocketnow have just scored a ton of information regarding the future of Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. Apparently they obtained a video where Joe Belfiore, Vice President of Windows Phone at Microsoft, goes through several of the new features that will be in Windows Phone Apollo, which at this point is all but confirmed as being called Windows Phone 8. This video was meant for Nokia’s partners, but it obviously escaped into the wrong hands. Here’s the condensed version of what’s in there: Apollo will … Read more

1 week ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Qualcomm and Ericsson demo a Voice over LTE call successfully handing off to WCDMA

Ever wonder why smartphones with 4G LTE connectivity have such terrible battery life? The answer is rather simple. While most phones usually have only one cellular radio on at the same time, devices using 4G LTE need to have two radios on simultaneously. One of those radios, the one that does that 4G LTE, can only really do data. Voice and text messages are sent over a second cellular radio that connects to a legacy 3G network. Now this is solely the case on Verizon’s network, with AT&T things go … Read more

1 week ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Samsung and Corning plan on getting together for future ultra strong OLED screens

Samsung is the undisputed leader when it comes to building displays using OLED technology. Sure, we sometimes hate the tricks that they sometimes pull (PenTile!) in order to make their screens cheap enough to manufacture in volume, but for the most part they’re doing a fantastic job at pushing the state of the art forward. Corning is also an equally admirable company. They invented the glass that most of us fondle on a daily basis and take for granted when we accidentally put our mobile device in the same pocket … Read more

1 week ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Photo: Say hello to the Samsung Galaxy S II Plus, it looks awfully familiar

Earlier today, less than six hours ago in fact, we filed a report saying that Samsung was going to announce a device at Mobile World Congress later this month called the Galaxy S II Plus. Now, thanks a tweet from Eldar Murtazin, Editor in Chief of Mobile-Review, we now know what that device looks like. As you can see from the image below it’s pretty much the Galaxy S II we all know and love, except that Ice Cream Sandwich’s onscreen buttons are no longer on the screen, they’re instead … Read more

1 week ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Memo to Kazuo Hirai, the new CEO of Sony: Bring the video game business model to smartphones

What if I told you that I have inside information on a new ultra high end smartphone that’s due to come out in less than three weeks? It has a quad core ARM Cortex A9 processor, quad core PowerVR Series5XT graphics processor, 5 inch OLED screen, WiFi/3G/GPS/Bluetooth, and best of all it’s going to cost just $300. Those are the specifications of Sony’s new dedicated portable gaming system, the PlayStation Vita, and yes, it’s going to cost only $300 when it launches later this month in the United States. Now … Read more

1 week ago

Stefan Constantinescu

LG A290: Triple the SIM cards for those with triple the mistresses

Most handset makers sell a majority of their devices through operators, so they’ll do anything to maintain that relationship, even if it means not bringing a product that consumers want out to market. We’re talking about multi SIM devices of course, the phones that let people have more than one phone number so they can save themselves some money on calls and texts instead of making operators richer and fatter. Chinese handset vendors were the first to sell dual SIM devices, but Samsung became the first real credible brand to … Read more

1 week ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Marko Ahtisaari, Head of Nokia Design: Future Windows Phones will have NFC, possibly wireless charging

When Nokia reported their Q4 2011 financial results last month there was one bit of news in there that we glossed over. Marko Ahtisaari, son of Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland, had his title upgraded from Head of Nokia Design to Executive Vice President of Nokia Design. His responsibilities will stay the same, he’ll just bring home more bacon. Anyway, Marko recently sat down with The Guardian and let out some details about the future of Nokia’s devices. Let’s start with the obvious: Near Field Communication (NFC) will be … Read more

1 week ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Samsung confirms no Galaxy S III at Mobile World Congress

If you haven’t already noticed, today is the first of February! For those of us in the mobile industry it’s our favorite month of the year. It’s when nearly every company (except Apple) that makes up one of the most exciting fields in consumer electronics gets together and shows off the devices that we’ll be talking about for the next 12 months. That’s right, it’s Mobile World Congress time, and we had some pretty high hopes that we’d be seeing Samsung’s newest flagship device at the event, but the South … Read more

1 week ago

Stefan Constantinescu

T-Mobile shaves $10 off the Lumia 710, Microsoft giving them away on their site

T-Mobile launched the Lumia 710 for $50 on the 11th of January for $49.99 with a two year contract. Three weeks later, that price is now down to $39.99. Microsoft, who apparently has an online store that this author had no idea even existed, is also now selling the Lumia 710 … for free. That’s right, they’re giving it away with a two year contract. Earlier today we also saw a tweet from Eldar Murtazin, Editor in Chief of Mobile-Review, saying that the Lumia 710 is on sale in Russia … Read more