News

HTC press event live blog

We’re off to HTC’s April press event later today and, as we have done in the past, we’ll be teaming up with Paul from MoDaCo to live blog the proceedings. We’re expecting some interesting announcements today so starting at between 13:30 and 14:00 BST we’ll be live blogging. The feed below should auto update for the duration and you’ll be able to ask us questions as we go along too. After the event you’ll be able to replay the live blog as well.

Click through for the live blog page below:

Nokia announces update for a range of Symbian devices

Even though Nokia are adopting Windows Phone 7 in the future they are still clearly working to make Symbian a better platform. Nokia have announced an update , named Anna, that will roll out over the coming months for the N8, E7, C7 and C6-01. The forthcoming X7 and E6 will ship with the new version of the OS pre loaded.

The new stuff includes the following:

• New, fresh icons
• Great usability enhancements improving text input
• Easier and faster web browser with improved UI
• Refreshed Ovi maps including simpler and quicker search
• Enterprise grade security and messaging enhancements
• First of a series of upcoming updates

You can see a video of these below.

HTC Flyer up for pre order

Over at the Carphone Warehouse the HTC Flyer is currently showing as available for pre order. Now although the site shows it as being in stock the word on the street is that the device will not be shipping until next month so don’t get too excited just yet.

Priced at £599.99 for the Wi-Fi version it doesn’t come cheap and in fact one would argue that it is massively over priced at nearly six hundred whole English pounds.

If you missed our demo video with the Flyer you can check it out here. 

Head on over to Carphone Warehouse if you want to get your order in now.

For those of you that want a reminder what the HTC Flyer has to offer you can see more details below:

Windows 8 Tablet optimised

Some pictures have been released for what looks to be the Tablet interface. This new UI known as Immersive is a locked down feature, operating at 640×480 and cannot be resized. Something else notable is the addition of an Immersive version of Internet Explorer designed for the platform. Most of the features do not work so I think is safe to say we won’t see this for some time, or if we do it might have that rushed feel some developers like to go for.

Dungeon Defenders: Second Wave launches exclusively on the Xperia PLAY

On April 1st, Trendy Entertainment and Sony Ericsson released Dungeon Defenders: Second Wave, the player versus player, multiplayer sequel to the hit, number one Android game Dungeon Defenders: First Wave! Originally planned only for consoles, now it’s playable for the first time as it was originally meant to be played-with controls on Sony Ericsson’s new Xperia PLAY smartphone. If you love online games, then you will surely love LevelUp casino too.

Xperia PLAY, which launches this month around the world, is the must-have smart phone on the fully-featured Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) platform. It is also the world’s first PlayStation certified smartphone, offering unrivalled gaming capability with dedicated gaming controls and ultra-fast graphics based on the optimized Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and Adreno GPU.

iPad and Lovefilm: Awesome

I have no idea if this has been announced elsewhere, but here is some great news!

For Americans, one of the pleasures of the iPad has been the ability to stream movies via Netflix, in the UK we’ve been poorly served since our equivalent, LoveFilm, has been slow to get their act together. The issue has been that iPhones and iPads don’t run flash, and LoveFilm’s streaming service relies on it to work. So your LoveFilm subscription has been useless on Apple iOS devices.

Well down at the Ideal Home Show this weekend, where I often go hunting for a story (?), I brought up this issue at the large LoveFilm stand. The staff were fairly clueless but put me through to someone senior who told me that as part of their expansion plans (which recently involved streaming on the PS3 etc), they will be iPad and iPhone friendly from mid-April. He also mentioned that the number of movies available to stream is about to increase dramatically thanks to the company being bought by Amazon a few months back.

Posted by Gareth

HTC host another public meet up

Once again HTC are inviting members of the public to join them next Tuesday (12th April) at a London location for food, drinks and maybe a bit of phone action!

You can find all the details over on the events Facebook page but if you want a quick look at what they have to say please see below:

London, we thought it was high time we had another get-together. We had so much fun with you all last time.
We hope all of you can drop by, chill-out and have a chat with us. We will have food and drink, and we’ll also have an exclusive set by a pioneering UK DJ. But most excitingly, we have some exciting news to share with you! It is guaranteed to be a sensory experience.
Make sure your friends don’t miss out – bring them along with you.
If you are planning on attending, please RSVP by clicking “I’m attending” at the top of this page. Just remember that it’s an event for people over 18 and it’s on a first come first served basis.
PS. For those of you that aren’t in London – never fear – we have plans to come see you soon. We’ll let you know details closer to the time.

Click here for the link and we will see you there. Come and say Hi if you want to. I will be the one with the bald head and tattoos. (The tattoos are not on my bald head!) and Matt is the one with green hair and a walking stick!

Posted by: James

Samsung Galaxy S2 gets a processor upgrade

The chaps at gsmarena have posted that the Samsung Galaxy S2 will be released with a 1.2 GHz processor instead of the 1GHz that was announced at the launch event in Barcelona. That is great news for all you Android fans that are waiting for the device to be released. The problem we have is when is it going to be released. Some retailers are stating it will be in May, where as other sites are claiming June. Either way, it is fantastic news that Samsung have made the improvements, however if they don’t get the handset on sale soon it will more than likely be lacking on other specs judging by how soon we see new Android devices released.

Posted by: James

Motorola Atrix Coming Soon to Orange

The Motorola Atrix has now appeared on the Orange website and is listed as coming soon. Historically this could mean the Atrix is available on the network from a day to many weeks so don’t get too excited just yet. 

The Atrix comes with a dual core processor however I cant see this mentioned on the Orange site which baffles me slightly as you would have thought that with so many Android phones on the market both Motorola and Orange may want to mention this to help sales. Oh well.

There is also no mention of if Orange will sell the laptop dock that you can buy as an accessory.

If you missed our demo video of the Atrix you can watch it here and there is also a reminder of its specification below.

Acer tablets up for preorder on Amazon

Acer’s Iconia Tab A500 10" and A100 7" tablets have shown up for pre-order on Amazon UK, for £449.99 and £299.99 respectively. Amazon has a release date of April 20.
The 7" A100 looks to be the first 7" Android 3.0 Honeycomb equipped tablet to be shipping. Both tablets are listed with Nvidia Tegra 2 Cortex A9 dual-core processors. The 7" A100 has only 512MB of RAM and 8GB onboard storage to go with the significantly smaller form-factor, though it is expected to have a nice WSVGA (1024×600) display. The 10" A500 looks to be the usual 1280×800 display with 1GB RAM for Honeycomb devices. It shall also ship with 32GB of onboard storage Both tablets are wifi-only tablets that also come with Bluetooth connectivity.
Acer Android products have seen limited success compared to the likes of HTC and Motorola in the past. Their lack of support and history poor response to GPL source code requests does not bode well with the end-users, despite their competitive pricing schemes.

Posted by Gareth