News

ZTE Tania now in stock at Clove

You can now pick up the rather nicely priced ZTE Tania over at Clove.  After last weeks price drop it can be yours for £165.83 (£199.99 inc. VAT). Don’t let the price fool you though, its low price tag does not mean low quality.

Key features of the Tania include:

• Windows Phone 7.5

• 1GHz processor

• 4.3 inch display

• 5 megapixel camera with auto focus & flash

• 4GB Internal Memory

• WiFi 802.11b/g/n

• 3G/HSPA

You can order yours today by clicking here.

Posted by: James

A Love story: Google and Motorola Mobility

The Department of Justice gave its seal of approval to Google’s proposed takeover of U.S. cell-phone maker Motorola Mobility on Monday, just hours after European regulators also gave the deal clearance.

The $12.5 billion acquisition positions Google to move into the device market and potentially into more direct competition with companies like Apple.
Google wants to own the hardware to pair with its Android operating system for smartphones, and could use the acquisition to protect patents as well as to develop other devices such as home gaming systems.

“The combination of Google and Motorola Mobility will help supercharge Android,” Google’s Don Harrison said in a blog post earlier in the day. “It will also enhance competition and offer consumers faster innovation, greater choice, and wonderful user experiences.”

The European Union earlier on Monday approved the deal, which still needs the approval of regulators in several other countries, including China.

Posted by: Gareth

Facebook for Windows Phone gets updated

If you are a Windows Phone user and like to partake in a bit of Facebook action then good news for you today as the Facebook app is updated to version 2.3.

I just checked my HTC Radar and the update wasn’t available so it may take a while to reach us here in the UK but should be today.

• News feed performance improvements
• New panorama design
• New profile design.
• Banner Images
• Improved navigation
• Pages
• Groups
• View “likes”
• Feed filters
• Posting privacy
• Bug fixing

Posted by: James

RIM extends its PlayBook offer for developers

Research in Motion has been giving away BlackBerry PlayBooks to devs for a while now. Due to the overwhelming response they have now extended the offer so if you are an Android dev and fancy porting your app over to the PlayBook you have a little more time to do so.

We knew developers were excited about our latest BlackBerry® PlayBook offer for Android developers when we announced it two weeks ago. You asked that Native C/C++, HTML5, Adobe® AIR®, and Qt developers have a chance to participate and we answered by opening the offer to all developers.

Today was going to be the deadline for the offer – but due to the overwhelming interest in the offer, we’re extending it one more time. How much interest? There have been over 1,500 app submissions as of last Friday and over 6,600 new developers registered in the BlackBerry App World storefront.  We have teams working around the clock to approve vendor registrations and app submissions.  Because of the high demand, approvals are taking longer than normal – we appreciate your patience.

If you’re not a registered BlackBerry App World vendor, you now have until 11:59 PM EST on February 15, 2012 to register at http://appworld.blackberry.com/isvportal.

All vendors (new and existing) now have until 11:59 PM EST on March 2, 2012 to submit your application to BlackBerry App World.

Posted by: James

ZTE Tania–Price drop just £199

It might not have even started shipping yet, but the price of the ZTE Tania has just been reduced, at Clove by £50, in preparation for the first stock due in next week, commencing 20th Feb.

Now just £199 inclusive of VAT the Tania is without doubt one of the best bargains on the market at the moment.

Key features of the Tania include:

• Windows Phone 7.5
• 1GHz processor
• 4.3 inch display
• 5 megapixel camera with auto focus & flash
• 4GB Internal Memory
• WiFi 802.11b/g/n
• 3G/HSPA

For more information or to order this exceptionally priced handset just CLICK HERE.

Posted by: James

New BBM Music Offer Means Free Music for You

The BBM Music team has been very busy over the last few months launching  BBM-connected social music service in eight different countries around the world. RIM are excited that BBM Music is now available for download in Canada, the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Australia – with more regions still to come, so stay tuned! If you haven’t yet tried BBM Music, RIM are even more excited to let you know that in the month of February 2012, you can download BBM Music FREE for up to 4 months in Canada or the US, or FREE for up to 6 months in the UK, Spain & Italy.

Along with the free trials, RIM have added some new features to BBM Music v1.1.

You can see the features below:

Toshiba AT200 arrives

Carphone Warehouse has put the Toshiba AT200, also known as the Toshiba Excite X10, up for sale. The 7.7mm 10 inch tablet houses a 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5 megapixel rear camera, a front facing camera and comes in configurations of either 16GB or 32GB. This one’s still running Honeycomb, unfortunately, but Toshiba assures us that it will be getting the upgrade to Android 4.0+ sometime down the line. Pricing is £399 and £449 for the 16GB and 32GB configurations, respectively. Deliver to the mainland and store are free, but you’ll have to wait until February 15th to find it in-stores. Get started here and here.

Full specs after the below:

HTC Sensation XE in White will be launching the week commencing 20th February

Clove dropped us a word this morning that the HTC Sensation XE White will be launching the week commencing 20^th February, priced at £340 (£408 inc. VAT).

Features of HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio:

• Android 2.3 Gingerbread
• 1.5GHz processor
• 4.3" QHD Super LCD capacitive touch screen
• 8MP camera, dual LED flash and VGA front camera
• 1080p HD video recording
• 4Gb eMMC ROM, 768Mb RAM, plus microSD storage
• 160 grams
• 1730 mAh battery
• Complete with urBeats in-ear headphones in the box

Posted by: James

HTC Sensation’s range receiving ICS in March, Confirmed

The awesome HTC Sensation range are about to get even better, rumours and news from the HTC camp are that the Sensation, XE and XL are getting ICS, Android 4.0 by early March.

No news on which carriers will see this first but as usual I would expect those lucky enough to have unlocked units would see the first serving followed by locked units to each respective carrier.

Other handsets are soon to follow on from this but this is the first official notification on certain models. The update coincides with the launch of the carrier available locked Sensation in White.  

Posted by: Paul

Good news – Google releases Chrome for Android, Bad news – ICS 4.0 only

Google labs have been busy and have released a beta version of chrome for Android, that’s the good news, the bad news is that it’s only available for handsets running ICS/4.0 software and at the time or writing that’s limited to you lucky people with a Galaxy Nexus.

The first version is (apparently) “just like” the desktop version, browsing is a great user experience and runs very quickly, the latter being more to do with connection speed I would guess.

Another great feature is that anyone using Chrome Sync will also get their bookmarks synced on the android version too, how cool is that?

Standby if you have a high spec android running the latest version as updates are imminent, especially those handsets with fast processors. HTC have put a list of handsets up on their Facebook page that will receive ICS in Q1. Others will surely follow soon.

Posted by: Paul