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Galaxy on Fire 2 goes free and Valkyrie Add-on exclusively available for Xperia PLAY

For the first time ever, the award-winning sci-fi trade shooter Galaxy on Fire 2 is available for free, exclusively for the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY. Also first time on the Android platform, Xperia PLAY users can purchase the add-on Valkyrie.

Fishlabs Entertainment, one of the world’s leading independent mobile games developers, finally releases the first add-on for its popular action-packed space trader Galaxy on Fire 2 on Android: As of today, Galaxy on Fire 2 – Valkyrie is exclusively available for the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY smartphone on the Android Market via in-app purchase for £ 2.99. Furthermore, all gamers who own an Xperia PLAY device will also be able to download the award-winning sci-fi epic Galaxy on Fire 2 for free until January 1st, 2012.

More details and a video below:

O2 begin London 4G trial

O2 has begun a 4G LTE trial in London. The trial will be available to around 1000 individuals, which will run until June 2012, and will offer speeds of up to 150 MB per second on the spectrum used.

Over 25 4G sites will go live across London this month, covering a combined area of 40 square kilometres, between now and summer 2012.The network will stretch from Hyde Park to The O2 in Greenwich and has been carefully designed to cover key areas of the capital, including Canary Wharf, Soho, Westminster, South Bank and Kings Cross.

The network will enable O2 to provide a mobile internet experience comparable to the fastest landline fibre home broadband connections, unlocking a wealth of services including high speed corporate LAN access, high-definition film and music streaming, mobile online gaming and high-speed access to social networks. At these speeds, the time to download a 500MB file could be as fast as under one minute, compared to over 5 minutes on 3G.

Samsung Omnia W available at Play.com

If you are in the market for a new Windows Phone sim free then the Samsung Omnia W may be a contender. Play.com are now showing the device as available and in stock for £339.99. In terms of Windows Mango devices we do not yet many to choose from here in the UK. Currently your only other options are the Titan and Radar from HTC.

The Omnia W sports a 1.4 GHz processor, 3.7 Super AMOLED display and a 5 megapixel camera.

We are yet to give this one a test drive so please don’t ask for our opinions. It looks pretty good though.

You can see the Omnia W full spec below:

Orange San Francisco II more than rumoured!

Everybody’s favourite budget smartphone and runaway success on Orange is getting a sequel. Engadget spotted the device on the operator’s own Help & Support page, the San Francisco II features an 800MHz ARM11 processor, 3.5-inch WVGA TFT display, a 5 megapixel rear camera and 512MB of onboard memory. The ZTE-built black slab gets the upgrade to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Engadget appears to mention it comes pre-loaded with both Ovi and BlackBerry Maps for navigation however that might cause you to scratch your head a bit given the Android flavouring. You can try an find it yourself however all links to the source post on the Orange site are dead.

Posted by Gareth

A fine selection of devices available now on Vodafone PAYG with Freedom Freebees

All of Vodafones pay as you go phones come ready for customers to take advantage of great value Freebees, which include a choice of free minutes, text and web access or international calls www.vodafone.co.uk/freebees. Every pay as you go customer is also automatically opted-in to Freebee Rewardz.

Every time a pay as you go customer tops up as little as £5, they’ll receive a text giving them a voucher code. They can then go online to ‘grab’ an instant reward or bank them as ‘grow’ points, to save up for something bigger. www.vodafone.co.uk/rewardz

Customers can choose from a wide selection of rewards including big name discounts from brands such as Thorntons and BLOCKBUSTER, music downloads and free minutes or choose to take a mystery reward, which could be anything from a smoothie maker to an iPhone. Alternatively, customers can collect points towards vouchers and experience days.

HTC Edge to boast Tegra 3?

New details about HTC’s first quad-core powered phone, the HTC Edge, have surfaced. Rumour has it may launch in April or May of 2012. The new release timeframe falls in line with HTC’s typical spring product cycle for handsets which make their debut at Mobile World Congress in February.

Most competitors are planning Quad-core phones for 2012 like Motorola, LG and Samsung. We speculate at least one next-gen phone at CES. Even if the HTC Edge is not the first quad-core Tegra 3 phone to hit the market, there’s no denying that it will be a game changer for HTC. In the past HTC has partnered closely with Qualcomm, but the late launch of Qualcomm’s dual-core S3 chip forced HTC to be one of the last Android manufacturers to release dual-core powered devices.  Recent numbers show that HTC performed very well over this year, but we expect HTC wants to stay in step with the competition next year in order to improve its market share even more.

Most of the HTC Edge’s rumoured specs are still holding up, but some new details point out that the phone’s thickness could be reduced to 8.8mm and the 4.7-inch 720p S-LCD 2 display will be optically laminated, which bonds the panel to the fascia glass to improve visibility.

Posted by: Gareth

Three taking pre orders of the Nokia Lumia 800

If you are thinking of getting the Nokia Lumia 800 with a contract then you should really give Three some consideration. The device is available free from £30 per month on a 24 month contract, however if you are prepared to pay £37 per month you will be able to take advantage of the One Plan with unlimited date, 2000 minutes and 5000 texts, more than enough for even hardcore users. Deliveries of the Lumia 800 are expected around the 18th November.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is a Windows Phone unlike any other. It’s good-looking with a slick, scratch-resistant casing and the curved 3.7" AMOLED display makes colours really rich and vivid – perfect for internet and apps. The mega-fast 1.4GHz processor makes gaming, browsing and streaming a smooth experience and there’s a whopping 16GB internal memory, giving you loads of space for all your music, pictures and videos. On top of this, the Lumia 800 has a fantastic 8 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with a wide-angle lens and flash which is ideal for taking photos and uploading them instantly to your free 25GB SkyDrive. And with Microsoft’s latest Windows Phone 7.5 software (known as Mango) you get everything built in – from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, to a brand new multi-tasking tool that lets you do everything at once and quickly switch between apps and webpages. You also get Nokia Drive for unbeatable turn-by-turn navigation, Nokia Music with Mix Radio – which let’s you stream music radio stations for free – and access to all the Windows Phone apps in Marketplace.

Order your Nokia Lumia 800 here.

Posted by: James

BlackBerry 5.0 sounds available to download

If you have upgraded from a BlackBerry 5.0 device to 6 or 7, one of the things you may have noticed is that the notification tones are different and there is a smaller range to choose from. Now although the 5.0 sounds could be installed onto your BlackBerry 6 or 7 device’s microSD card it was not common knowledge and non geeks probably wouldn’t know where to find them.

The 5.0 sounds are now available to download from BlackBerry App World so everyone can enjoy the notification sounds they were used to in the good old days.

Do a search in App World and enjoy.

Posted by: James

Sky News app released for BlackBerry

I have been waiting for this one for so long. Great news as the Sky News app appeared recently in BlackBerry App World and much like on other platforms you not only have the ability to read news articles but also watch video too.

The app is free to download and one of the features I love is that you can set the application to auto refresh and the news feeds will be integrated into your message inbox. BBM integration is also supported!

You can see more details below along with a selection of pictures of the main features.

If you own a BlackBerry downloading this app is a must.

Mobile Tech Addicts Podcast 143: Take 2

James gets a decent internet connection this week for a wickedly exciting tech fest. This week is review central with the boys looking at the Motorola Defy+, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray, the Samsung Galaxy Note, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro. That should make up for last week!

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