Items tagged with mwc2015
Will your next mobile device come from Huawei? Don't rule it out, even if you've never heard of the company. Huawei makes some downright sexy looking mobile devices, though its presence in the United States is limited, in part because of a House Intelligence Committee report in 2012 ago saying that Chinese telecom firms Huawei and ZTE pose security threats to the U.S.Over two years removed from the report, Huawei plans to focus on the U.S. market and win over consumers by launching several new smartphones and wearable products stateside, which it will promote with a marketing push, according to Reuters. The company didn't say how much it plans to spend on marketing its devices, though it will...
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BlackBerry is taking aim at young mobile professional types with its newly unveiled Leap smartphone for 4G LTE networks. It's an all-touch handset (read: no physical keyboard) sporting a "modern and powerful design" and an edge-to-edge 5-inch HD (1280x720; 294 pixels per inch) display. The device will replace the Z3 in BlackBerry's lineup. "In today's mobile world – influenced by trends like BYOD – where personal and corporate data are frequently under attack from hackers, companies and everyday consumers are finding out the hard way that mobile security is paramount," said Ron Louks, President, Devices and Emerging Solutions. "BlackBerry Leap was built specifically for mobile professionals who...
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ARCHOS on Tuesday issued a press release claiming it invented "Fusion Storage," a clever storage scheme that's not to be confused with Apple's Fusion Drive and Fusion-io technology. They're slightly similar technologies, in that both combine two different storage options and present them as a single drive. The way it works is when you pop a memory card into a compatible tablet's microSD card slot, ARCHOS will use special software to combine the built-in memory with the external card, thereby fusing the two separate storage mediums into a single solution. So if you have 64GB of internal storage and add a 64GB microSD card, you'll end up with a single 128GB partition. "Once activated, ARCHOS Fusion...
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It wouldn't be like Sony to show up at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona empty handed, and it didn't. Instead, Sony brought along a couple of mobile products, including the Xperia M4 Aqua, a mid-range phone with a 5-inch display, and the Xperia X4 Tablet, a 10.1-inch slate with a 2K (2560x1600) display. Starting with the phone, the Xperia M4 Aqua is supposed to represent Sony's "renewed mid-range focus" to the handset market with no compromises. Included among that claim is a two-day battery life and a waterproof design. It's also Sony's first smartphone with an octa-core 64-bit processor, which comes courtesy of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 chip clocked at 1.5GHz with Adreno 405 graphics....
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It's been five years since Steve Kondik posted a custom Android ROM for the T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream) on XDA forum under the "CyanogenMod" handle. It set the foundation for what has become the most popular open-source Android community distribution today, though that's far from the end of the story. Just the opposite, the best is yet to come, and to celebrate this new beginning, Cyanogen has a new brand identity. "Today we're announcing a new look that we hope captures our commitment to openness. This new approach celebrates space, with minimal letterforms that don't quite connect, giving the logo a sense of motion and a feeling of inherent energy," Cyanogen stated in a blog post. "The new Cyanogen...
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Mobile World Congress isn't just home to cool smartphones, and SanDisk proves it with its announcement of a jaw-dropping 200GB microSD card. Yes, 200GB - as in the storage capacity of 45 DVDs and 4 dual-layer Blu-ray discs on a memory card sporting a length of 15mm and thickness of 1mm. What else can be said but, "wow!"? With this much storage space, you'll be able to capture up to 20 hours of 1080p content - that's some serious freedom, right there. The card could also be used to store about ~100 720p movies, ~1,300 MP3 music albums, or ~20,000 high-res photos. Before you think, "But I can't use that in my phone!", it seems that you can if you use Android, as SanDisk's press release states,...
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When it comes to the mobile market, Intel is coming on strong as of late, and we’re not just talking about with notebooks. Intel’s Atom processors, while not as potent as their Celeron and Core counterparts, allowed mainstream tablets to run a full-featured version of Windows while still offering respectable performance and decent battery life. Intel is ready to unleash a new family of Atom processors, and it’s taking a cue from its highly successful Core series of processors. Similar to the Good, Better, Best strategy with the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7, Intel is renaming its Atom family with x3, x5, and x7 designations. With its new Atom processors, Intel is looking to take on...
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As we’ve reported numerous times, Microsoft just can’t get over budget smartphones. While we understand the need for Microsoft to embrace the entry-level market, it seems like this is the only market that the company is interested in these days. Over 70 percent of Windows Phones out in the wild have just 512MB of memory or less, and nearly 33 percent of all Windows Phones sold are the lowly Lumia 520. And just like fans of a losing sports franchise sitting in the stands hoping that a new star comes to lead their team to a championship (or at least the playoffs), Windows Phone users are looking towards a new flagship to set the tone for the Windows platform. Unfortunately, that won’t happen for...
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You expect the usual names like HTC and Samsung to make a splash at Mobile World Congress, but Lenovo? Part of the company's stated strategy going forward is to become a leader in smartphones and tablets. Following yesterday's unveiling of three affordable slates, Lenovo today is introducing a pair of new smartphones and a tiny projector.The first is the VIBE Shot, Lenovo's first smartphone crossover device, or 2-in-1 camera phone, if you prefer to call it that. What Lenovo means by that is the VIBE Shot is intended to be a "fabulous camera" for shutterbugs and a "performance-laden" smartphone in the same package.On the photography side, the VIBE Shot boats a 16-megapixel rear camera with a six-piece...
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This is one of those times when it feels great to finally see a product get announced, as it feels like we've been waiting forever for this one. Today, at Mobile World Congress, Samsung took the veil off of its much-anticipated Galaxy S6, and also the Galaxy S6 edge. As has been heavily rumored, the S6 foregoes the plastic shell of its predecessor and integrates metal and glass instead, resulting in a far more premium feel, a thickness of 6.8mm, and a weight of 138g on the normal S6 and 132g on the edge. Samsung made it a point to mention that the metal it uses is 50% stronger than other smartphones - a bendgate jab, perhaps? Both the S6 and S6 edge share the same hardware, which includes a 5.1-inch...
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The Windows Phone platform could benefit from a few more players to go along with the usual crop of Lumia devices, don't you think? Well, here comes Acer with its Liquid M220, the company's first Windows Phone 8.1 device, though temper your expectation -- this is very much an entry-level phone and not a game-changing handset. The Liquid M220 has a 4-inch display with an 800x480 resolution and pixel density of 233 pixels per inch, 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, microSD card slot, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, and 2-megapixel front-facing camera. According to Acer, the Liquid M220 will see an upgrade to Windows 10, though Microsoft has...
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Huawei shocked is all when two videos of its “Huawei Watch” made their way onto YouTube. Combining the naturally good looks of the Motorola Moto 360 with the completely circular display of the LG Watch Urbane makes for a beautiful smartwatch. Throw in the scratch resistant cold-forged stainless steel housing that is available in natural, gold, and black finishes, and you have what looks to be a winner. However, we have to remember that this is still an Android Wear device, and Google has a lot of say over what these smartwatches can and can’t do. So while OEMs can get a bit inventive with the outward design of their smartwatches, the software and internals don’t vary much between devices. Inside,...
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If the transition from the Galaxy S4 to Galaxy S5 was disappointing to customers and detrimental to Samsung’s smartphone sales/earnings, we have to wonder if the same fate will befall HTC. We hope not, but the HTC One M9’s specs have been officially revealed, and for better or worse, it’s more of the same. As we have detailed in previous articles, the HTC One M9 carries on the same design theme that we first saw with the One M7 and continued with the One M8. It’s a clean, sleek, industrial look, but it would have been nice to see HTC spice things up a bit. With Samsung swinging for the fences design-wise with the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, we’ll just have to see how HTC’s conservative approach...
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We’re just a little over a week away from the official unveil of HTC’s next generation flagship: the One M9. The smartphone will be unveiled in Barcelona, Spain at the Mobile World Congress, but that isn’t stopping new renders of the One M9 in its final form from leaking to the Internet. German Retailer CyberPort posted press renders of the One M9 in a few different color combinations including gunmetal grey and gold/silver. Not surprisingly, the renders match up nicely with leaked photos that we’ve already seen of the One M9. For better or worse, the One M9 isn’t a drastic departure from the current generation One M8, which itself was a clear evolution of the One M7. However, the design of the...
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To say that the Galaxy S5 has been a sales disappointment for Samsung is a bit of an understatement. Customers weren’t exactly won over by what amounted to a warmed over Galaxy S4 in terms of design and specs. And whereas competitors like HTC and Apple have fully embraced unibody aluminum designs for their flagships, Samsung was still clinging on to cheap plastic for its top offering.That is all set to change with the release of the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge that will be released in early March. Samsung has released a series of teasers over the past few weeks, one of which appears to show the curved screen of the Galaxy S6 Edge. More recently, Samsung has posted teasers playing up its...
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We learned last week that HTC plans to launch its next generation flagship — whether you call it the One (M9) or “Hima” — at the 2015 Mobile World Congress on March 1. Yesterday, it was revealed that a new smartwatch would be launched alongside the new flagship in March. Nowhere Else, which has a pretty strong track record when it comes to smartphone leaks, today has two new photos of next generation One (M9). Unlike an earlier render that broke cover earlier this month, the new photos show a device that sticks very close to the design language seen in the current One (M8). The bezels are slightly narrower and the camera area is now square versus the circular on the current smartphone. Otherwise,...
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The 2015 Mobile World Congress is set to kick off in Barcelona, Spain on March 2. However, invitations that HTC sent out today confirm that we’ll actually catch our first glimpse of its next generation flagship smartphone a day early on March 1. In true teaser fashion, HTC isn’t revealing any new details about the device and simply states that “utopia is in progress.” However, thanks to ongoing leaks, we have at least a general idea of what HTC plans to launch in early March. Although it’s possible that HTC could go with the obvious One (M9) moniker for its new flagship, ‘Hima’ has been thrown around since early December. As for the processor, the obvious choice is Qualcomm’s new 64-bit Snapdragon...
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