We’ve already finished our in-depth review of the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini and it’s live on our homepage. And since we got to spend enough time with the Galaxy S4 mini, we also made it jump through the hoops of our traditional battery test routine.
The Galaxy S4 mini is powered by a 1900 mAh battery that should provide enough juice for the dual-core Snapdragon 400 chipset and the Super AMOLED qHD screen.
The Galaxy S4 mini showed excellent endurance for 3G calls. The smartphone lasted 13 hours and 10 minutes, which is quite impressive considering the relatively modest battery – all the flagships around it have more than 2,000 mAh juice packs. And since screen is off in this test and the chipset has nothing to do, we’d attribute the great performance to the very efficient modem that Qualcomm has designed.
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Samsung
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The HTC One mini just went official and we were lucky enough to get to handle the new diminutive handset. The One mini takes the aluminum unibody, UltraPixel camera, BoomSound stereo speakers and Android 4.2.2 with Sense 5 of the regular One and compacts them into a smaller package with a 4.3″ 720p screen.
So, how much smaller is it? It’s 5mm shorter and 5mm narrower (about 0.2″ on a side) and lighter too – 122g vs. 143g for the big One. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the thickness.
The HTC One mini isn’t as compact as the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini (which is 8mm shorter than the One mini), but then it fits two stereo speakers on its front. What counts is that it’s tangibly more compact than the HTC One without sacrificing the premium build, which was the whole point. Let’s face it, even the big Galaxy S4 doesn’t feel as deluxe as the One mini.
The screen on the HTC One mini is a 720p Super LCD 2 with Gorilla Glass 2. It’s much sharper than the qHD screen of the S4 mini – 342ppi vs. 256ppi – and has great viewing angles too.
The two things we’re not sold on are the chipset (Snapdragon 400 is usually good, but HTC downclocked it to 1.4GHz) and the non-expandable 16GB storage (12GB user available).
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HTC
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The Android 4.3 system dump for the Nexus 4 from yesterday is still not perfectly ready for daily use, but it’s now much easier to install. You can follow instructions here to flash it (using any recovery) to your Nexus 4, it shouldn’t delete your data (once again, proceed at your own risk and do a backup for peace of mind).
Why would you risk it when the official update could be just days away? Android 4.3 brings few changes over 4.2.2, but they are important – and better performance is seemingly one of them.
Native performance is virtually unchanged (as measure by CFBench), but that’s hardly a surprise. The Dalvik VM has been retooled and apps that don’t use the NDK (that’s the majority of them) should see a performance bump.
CFBench – native
Higher is better
- Nexus 4 (Android 4.2.2)22876
- Nexus 4 (Android 4.3)22342
CFBench – Java
Higher is better
- Nexus 4 (Android 4.3)7390
- Nexus 4 (Android 4.2.2)6872
Android 4.3 supports OpenGL ES 3.0 and seems to include other changes to the graphics stack as 3D performance in GLBenchmark 2.5 has gone up by several frames in both on and off screen tests. It’s a pretty big difference indeed, but developers will also have to do their part and take advantage of it.
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HTC
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The Sony Xperia Z Ultra was announced last month as the company’s first foray into the realm of phablets with its robust 6.5-inch screen.
Besides the new Triluminous display engine, the Z Ultra features Sony’s handwriting recognition technology, which lets you write on the display using nearly anything with tip less than 1mm in diameter. This latest video takes a closer look at exactly what does and doesn’t work as a writing device – from a set of keys to Stanley knives.
Most things worked fairly well, and it’s good to see that the key worked very well, especially since it’s one thing you’ll most likely have on hand in a pinch. Oddly enough, the mechanical pencil didn’t register at all, neither did the plastic ruler, and that goes without saying for the Stanley knife – although we recommend you don’t use the latter even if it did work. Good news is, even if many of these didn’t make for great stylus alternatives, they didn’t damage the display either, which means the Xperia Z Ultra certainly won’t be an easy to scratch device.
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Sony Xperia
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The new compact HTC One mini has just went official, and as tradition dictates, HTC has released a promo video on YouTube to mark the occasion.
The HTC One mini looks just like a minuaturized version of the HTC One flagship, all the way down to its aluminum body and UltraPixel camera (even if the Optical Image Stabilization has been stripped).Posted in:
HTC
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Android 4.3 cropped up on the Google Play Editions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One first but you shouldn’t doubt that the Nexus 4 will get it too. Some already have it – one Jeff Williams apparently bought a Nexus 4 from a Google employee and to his surprise the phone was running Android 4.3 JWR66N, thesame build number we saw on the Galaxy S4 GPE.
With some help, he managed to get a system dump of the phone. There’s no radio and bootloader yet
(Jeff promised to get those soon), but reports say you can use TWRP to restore the dump and get it to work. Proceed with caution (and full backup) as there’s no guarantee of the result.
Or you can wait – the official unveiling will be in less than a week, the even is scheduled for July 24. The delivery of the update for the Nexus 4 shouldn’t take too long after that.
You can grab the dump from here (339MB). If that’s not working, Android Police has set up a number of mirrors you can try.
In the meantime, we’ll wait and see if people digging through the system dump find anything that wasn’t on the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition, which we reviewed.
So, will the Samsung Galaxy Nexus get 4.3 as well? It’s currently on 4.2 and this is a relatively minor update.
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HTC
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A market research conducted by analyst company Kantar Worldpanel shows that iOS has grabbed 41.9% of the smartphone market in the US for the three-month period ending in May. That's an increase of 3.5 percent points over the same period of last year.
This gets Apple's mobile OS closer to Android, which managed to add the negligible 0.1% to its user base. Google's mobile OS now runs on 52% of the smartphones sold for the period.
As far as mobile carriers and their smartphone sales are concerned, Verizon is in the lead with 34.6%, AT&T is second with 29%, and Sprint gets the third spot with 12.7%. T-Mobile remains fourth with 10.1% slice of the smartphone sales, which is 3.4 percent points down compared to the same period of 2012.
AT&T owes 60.5% of its smartphone sales to the iPhone 5, while the phone's sales at Verizon mark 43.8% for the three months ending May 2013. Despite its late arrival over at T-Mobile, the Apple iPhone 5 was still the best-selling smartphone for the carrier. Overall, iPhone sales accounted for 31% of T-Mobile's smartphone sales
Kantar Worldpanel ComTech global consumer insight director Dominic Sunnebo reckons that T-Mobile manages to attract first time smartphone buyers, who are upgrading from a feature phones. "Of T-Mobile consumers who bought an iOS device since it launched on the carrier, 53% had previously owned a featurephone, well above the market average of 45% of iOS owners who previously owned a featurephone, he adds."
Lastly, there's Windows Phone, which stands in third place with 4.6% market share. Notably, that's 1 percent point increase compared to last year's result. However, the WP suffered a decline compared to the three-month period ending in April, when the mobile OS snatched 5.6% of the smartphone sales.
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Apple
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Photos of the upcoming LG Optimus G2 have surfaced and while they are of pretty poor quality they still manage to portray how the company's upcoming flagship looks like.
At the front, there's an obvious lack of both capacitive and physical buttons. This leaves on-screen capacitive buttons as the only option, which was confirmed earlier by a couple of leaked screenshots of the Optimus G2 UI.
At the back, there's the main camera coupled with LED on the right side as well as the interesting "+" and "-" buttons. It's believed they are related to the functionality of the camera, but nothing has been even confirmed yet. At the bottom, there's an accent from a different kind of plastic, but that probably isn't releated to the functionality of the phone.
The LG Optimus G2 has been seen in better photos than these, but the key thing here is that they align with previous leaks of the smartphone. Rumor has it the Optimus G2 would sport a 5.2" FullHD display with around 423 ppi density, a quad-core Snapdragon 800 chipset and 2 gigs of RAM. It's also likely that its 13 MP camera will come with Optical Image Stabilization.
All will become clear on August 7 when LG will hold the Optimus G2 launch event.
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LG
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Traces of an HTC One Google Play Store edition running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean have been found over at the Bluetooth SIG. Carrying the model number PNG71xx_Android_4.3_G, the smartphone has undergone the certification process starting June 18 and has got the all clear on July 5.
The reason for the re-certification of the HTC One is that Android 4.3 supports Bluetooth 4.0 LE. As a result, the Google Play Store versions of the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 running Android 4.3 will be able to connect to a myriad of accessories supporting the new low power standard.
Android 4.3 is still expected to be carrying the Jelly Bean name and as we found out in our testing of the Samsung Galaxy S4 leaked ROM, there are few changes worth writing home about. Google is yet to officially announced the next version of Android, but judging by the more and more intensive leaks, it can't be far away now.
We urge you to check out the Google Play Store edition HTC One unboxing and hands-on in our Blog.
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HTC
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Joe Belfiore, manager at Microsoft's Windows Phone division, has posted several samples which contain EXIF data identifying the device used as the Nokia Lumia 1020.
Lumia 1020 camera samples
The Lumia 1020, which leaked numerous times by its codename Nokia EOS, has since been identified by numerous sources as the Lumia 1020, a sequel to Nokia's current Windows Phone flagship, the Lumia 920. It may or may not have the PureView suffix attached to it, to liken it to the first Nokia model sporting PureView, the Nokia 808 PureView.
The first sample has a resolution of 2947 x 1658 pixels (~5MP), while the other is 2352 x 1568 pixels (3.7MP), but as we know the first PureView camera produced samples of similar resolution in its native supersampling mode.
The Lumia 1020 is expected to be announced by Nokia on July 11 at the #ZoomParty event in New York. Be sure to check back with us then for all the juicy details.
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Nokia
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A few days after we saw it wearing AT&T livery, the Nokia Lumia 1020 appeared in yet another press image. This time around, the Windows Phone 8 imaging powerhouse appeared free of carrier branding, and showcasing three colors - white, black, and yellow.
Alongside the leaked press image, some fresh details about the handset's specs emerged, including its much talked about camera unit. The latter promises to be a smartphone photographer's dream when the handset goes official.
Reportedly, the 41MP camera unit of the Nokia Lumia 1020 will be capable of simultaneously capturing 32MP and 5MP images with 16:9 ratio, as well as a 38MP ones with 4:3 aspect. The 5MP image will be oversampled by combining seven pixels into one "super pixel." The camera will unsurprisingly feature optical image stabilization (OIS) and F2.2 aperture.
The Pro Camera app which left us wondering last time will bring proper enthusiast settings to the user. They include the option to manually tweak ISO, white balance, focus, shutter speed, and the flash settings.
Further leaked specs for the Nokia Lumia 1020 included never before seen on WP handset 2GB of RAM, 32GB of non-expandable storage, NFC, FM radio, flip to silence gesture, and optional wireless charging.
Nokia Lumia 1020 is allegedly expected to hit AT&T's shelves by the end of this month. No details have been spilled on international availability.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 will break cover this coming Thursday in New York City. We will be covering the event live from the spot, so be sure to tune in for the full scoop on the smartphone.
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Nokia
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Apple has started seeding the third version of the developer preview of iOS 7 to registered developers. If you have it installed on your device, you should have gotten a prompt to update it by now.
As usual, there are several minor changes across the board but by far the most noticeable is the change of system fonts. The first two versions of iOS 7 beta used Helvetica Neue Light, which at times was bit hard to read. The latest version changes it to Helvetica Neue Regular, which is a lot more legible. Light and Ultra Light are still visible in certain places in the UI but less frequently than before.
Other changes include bigger status bar on the lockscreen, new animation for app downloads, dots in Calendar app to indicate events on particular days, new music player controls and much more.
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Apple
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It's Android OS version stats time again and it's an end of an era – the era of Gingerbread dominance. Jelly Bean (Android 4.1 and 4.2) finally did what ICS (4.0.x) never managed – get more market share than Gingerbread.
Gingerbread in its current form (API level 10) debuted in February 2011, while the initial version, API level 9, came out in December 2010, but all GB phones were updated. Anyway, it's still the most popular version of Android going by version numbers rather than nicknames – v2.3 is at 34.1% and v4.1 is at 32.3%, with v4.2 contributing another 5.6%.
Both Jelly Bean versions saw an increase in market sharesince May at the cost of Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich. Eclair and Froyo, which still hold single digit percentages have barely moved.
The Holo-centric Android 4.0+ versions now power over 60% of the Android market, which will hopefully mean that more devs focus on bringing a Holo interface with their apps.
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HTC
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The purported images of the alleged budget iPhone just don't stop pouring in. This newest one comes from Taiwanese AppleDaily who also claims to have a shot of the iPhone 5S aluminum chassis.
According to the latest hearsay, the budget iPhone will be available in five colors - red, yellow, white, blue and green. The bezel surrounding the display will be white instead of black for all models, as previous rumors suggested. Naturally, given the price-cutting needs of the alleged affordable iPhone, it's made entirely from pl.
As for the iPhone 5S, it'll look similar to the iPhone 5 it replaces, but with updated specifications. Some of them are said to include 2GB of RAM, 12MP camera and 4G LTE-A support. The display is reportedly a 4" IGZO unit with the resolution remaining unchanged at 1136 x 640 pixels, resulting in a pixel density of 326ppi.
Apple is rumored to keep the CPU of the iPhone 5S the same, but will upgrade the graphics from a triple-core PowerVR SGX 554MP3 GPU to a quad-core variant of the same graphics chips.
Some crazy rumors that'll need you to have salt around include a fingerprint sensor technology for unlocking the phone and verifying NFC payments as well as a LED light on the Home button that'll blink when the phone is unlocked.
The expected price of budget iPhone is $349, $449 and $549 for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants, respectively. Apple should announce the 2013 iPhone lineup in September, so we'll know for sure in about two months.
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