News

Win a MOTOLUXE with T-Mobile and Motorola

Motorola and T-Mobile are teaming up with a new and funky app which will see them give away a brand new MOTOLUXE.

Every week for 10 weeks, they are asking people to take part in their ‘What’s your line up?’ app to be in with a chance to win the MOTOLUXE (www.facebook.com/motorolaeurope). 

The app lets you create a ‘Social Graph’ – a cool graphic that shows you who your best friends are on Facebook, brings them together in a beautiful collage and lets you share your graph online. You can find out who you interact with the most on Facebook with the automatic selection button, or choose those nearest and dearest to you via the manual option.

The app is also a fun way of demonstrating the MotoSwitch application that comes pre-loaded on MOTOLUXE handsets. With MotoSwitch, the MOTOLUXE learns who you talk to and which apps you use the most, and puts all that information front and centre. The more frequently you communicate with someone, the bigger their icon becomes!

To get started, click on https://apps.facebook.com/whatsyourlineup/

Posted by: James

Samsung Galaxy S III delays

Set to be one of the best selling smartphones yet, the Samsung Galaxy S III is not off to a great start. Numerous sources are reporting that the pebble blue variant of the device which officially goes on sale tomorrow is now delayed along with the white 32GB version.

Clove have stated that they are expecting stock of the pebble blue GSIII to arrive on June 5th although at present this date is still to be confirmed. They are also reporting a one day delay with the white 16GB version so if you did pre order it looks like you may not receive it until June 1st.

The reason for the delay is not clear but I would imagine there are a lot of very unhappy Android fans out there today.

Posted by: James

Finally. A 22” tablet!

We all feel that the 7″ and 10″ have been covered over and over again. Well,  Viewsonic is planning on introducing a 22" Android ICS tablet at the upcoming Computex conference in June. These tablets will be a new breed of “smart business tablet monitors” and they are expected to be running both Android and Windows 8 when introduced. We think a more apt name is Moblet (Monitor Tablet) since these dimensions are reaching monitor size and Viewsonic is well known in that market. No other specs or details are available at this time but from the looks of the picture it appears that the models will have some sort of kick-stand or base to allow them to be propped up when in use.

Posted by: Gareth

Orange preparing for the launch of the Intel powered Santa-Clara (Codename)

We have known about the Intel powered Santa-Clara for quite a while now but it seems its launch in now imminent. Orange are holding a press event next week for the media to go hands on with the new Android smartphone. Santa-Clara is its codename and the Orange website states that its real name will be revealed at launch.

Pricing is not yet available but if Orange can follow suit with the likes of the San Francisco and Mote Carlo they may be at a real advantage as they were great value for money. The only downside I can see is that it is running Android 2.3 but I expect we will have confirmation on its upgrade to 4.0 at launch.

Specs wise the Santa-Clara is impressive. As well at the Intel processor it sports an 8mp camera that can take ten shots a second, HD video recording, 16gb of onboard storage and all presented on a bright 4.03″ display.

Sounds pretty impressive. Roll on next week.

Posted by: James

Nvidia Kai – Cheap Quad Core!

NVIDIA is working hard to make good on their promise to make $199.99 Tegra 3 quad-core tablets possible. NVIDIA’s VP of Investor Relations, Rob Csongor recently revealed during a recent stockholder meeting that the company is working on what it calls the "Kai" platform. He didn’t go into detail about it, but indicated that it will be a low-cost architecture that will allow for budget priced quad-core tablets. The stockholder meeting is pretty long at about 33 minutes, but we have included it in the source links below. Here’s a quote from the audio:

Quote:

Our strategy on Android is simply to enable quad-core tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich to be developed and brought out to market at the $199 price point, and the way we do that is a platform we’ve developed called Kai. So this uses a lot of the secret sauce that’s inside Tegra 3 to allow you to develop a tablet at a much lower cost, by using a lot of innovation that we’ve developed to reduce the power that’s used by the display and use lower cost components within the tablet.

Source: Nvidia

Posted by: Gareth

HTC announce Android 4.0 road map

The nice people at HTC have published a road map showing us which devices will receive an update to Android 4.0 and when. There are a few of the lower end devices that are not on the list such as the Cha Cha and Wildfire S but overall the support looks pretty good and it is a big list.

And as you will see it is not only recent phones that will receive Ice Cream Sandwich. The Incredible S for example has been around since early 2011 and the same with the Desire S.

Nice job HTC.  You can see the full list below:

Everything Everywhere confident in providing 4G this year

Earlier on today I met up with experts from the Everything Everywhere team that are responsible for the future roll out of 4G across the two networks (Orange and T-Mobile).

The company are steaming ahead with plans to roll out the upgrade this year despite a final decision to made by Ofcom. Although the decision is still pending EE are under the opinion that it should all go through fairly painlessly and are under the impression that why wouldn’t Ofcom want the evolution in new technology. Even if the ‘go ahead’ is delayed, fear not as Everything Everywhere are still going ahead and installing the required hardware and software into existing cell sites so a role-out can begin as soon as the approval is met.

This will leave Everything Everywhere with a clear advantage over the other UK networks as they are yet to focus on 4G, so I am told. With HSPA+ 42 up and running we may well see the counties largest network grow even more?

Thinking about it, the company have done a wonderful job over the past year or two. Not only have they merged the Orange and T-Mobile networks together they have then integrated firstly 2G roaming and then more recently 3G.

Some of the current speed caps etc may not be perfect but I have a feeling that things are on the shift later on in the year.

Posted by: James

Sony updates all their tablets to ICS

For owners of any of the Sony Android Tablets, you may be thrilled to learn that a new update will be rolling out OTA to you by the end of May, and that update is called Ice Cream Sandwich! Just today, Sony confirmed that ALL of their Android tablets in ALL regions will be receiving an OTA rollout of Android 4.0 by the end of May. Also, along with the tastiness of Ice Cream Sandwich, this update also brings a panoramic camera mode, an updated gallery viewer with SD card access, and some new enhancements to the web browser.

Posted by: Gareth

Rent HTC Watch movies for 5 pence

Earlier today Paul over at MoDaCo posted that HTC are offering once again a selection of movies to rent this weekend for the super price of just 5 pence each.

HTC Watch film rentals are valid for 30 days from payment and the movie must be finished within 48 hours or starting.

Remember,  HTC Watch works on Windows Phones as well as Android. Are you going to pick yourself up a bargain? I think I may will.

You can see the full list of available 5 pence movie rentals below:

Motorola RAZR MAXX in stock at Clove

To celebrate the Motorola RAZR MAXX being available to order now from Clove they are offering buyers of the new Android device the opportunity to win the Motorola XOOM 2 Media Edition!

You can find out more about the device and order the Motorola RAZR MAXX buy clicking here.

Posted by: James