Mobile Devices, Tablets & Phones News - Page 306

Amazon have unveiled two new tablets in the last couple of hours, dubbed the Kindle Fire HD. There'll be two sizes available, 7- and 8.9-inch. The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD will sport a 1920x1200 display with 254ppi.

It measures in at 8.8mm thickness, and weighs 20 ounces, the screen is also said to feature a polarizing feature that should reduce glare on the screen for those heavy Fifty Shades of Grey reading sessions. Inside the Fire HD 8.9, we're looking at a TI OMAP 4470 processor, dual speakers, front-facing HD camera and HDMI out.

Amazon is happy to brag that the Fire HD 8.9 is the first tablet to sport dual-band MIMO Wi-Fi technology, which the company says makes the slate's Wi-Fi 41% faster than the new iPad from Apple. The 16GB model Fire HD 8.9 will set you back $299, and will begin shipping on November 20.

We've seen Motorola unveil their Droid RAZR Maxx HD, and their edge-to-edge-sporting RAZR M, now we have the veil lifted on the Droid RAZR HD. Motorola's Droid RAZR HD sports a 4.7-inch HD display, a dual-core Qualcomm 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, and a 2,500mAh battery, of course, it also receives Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as its OS.

Motorola have built quite a large phone, while trying to keep it as slim as possible, as well as throwing a decently-sized battery in for good measure. Measuring in at just 8.4mm thick, 68mm across and 132mm tall, you'd forget there's a 4.7-inch screen sitting in front of your face. Motorola's Droid RAZR HD also features Kevlar coating which should keep it safe from most things, maybe except a bullet.

We get a micro-HDMI port, as well as micro USB and the usual 3.5mm headphone jack. Motorola are claiming that we should expect 10 hours of movie or TV show playback, and 6 hours of surfing the web. Because of its HD screen and 4.7-inch size, Moto claim that it sports the "same sharp clarity as your HDTV". Moto also claim that the RAZR HD will come with 24 hours of battery performance.

For the past couple of weeks I've been trying to get my hands on ASUS' Jelly Bean-powered Nexus 7 tablet, but to no avail. ASUS could hook me up with one, but it would be a review unit meaning it was tested and used by someone else, but I wanted a fresh one.

So, I ended up buying one personally, and here we are today. It arrived fresh in its box, and we've done an unboxing video, shown above. I go over a few things in the video, but I've used it for an hour or so since the video, and boy, is it a great tablet.

The first thing I noticed is that it really is a pure Google experience. This is what sets any Android-powered tablet apart from Apple's iPad. When you turn an iPad on, it's an iPad, from Apple, that's it. A pure iOS/Apple experience. When you turn on the usual Android tablet, it's an Android tablet from someone like Samsung or ASUS, powered by Google's Android OS, with some of Samsung or ASUS' UI splashed on top.

Samsung's flagship Galaxy S III has kicked Apple's iPhone 4S off of the throne in the US, where it has reached the #1 position as the top-selling US smartphone in August, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley.

The iPhone 4S, until now, had held the position since it launched in October, and if it had continued to have held onto its #1 position, it would've just cemented the iPhone's power in the smartphone market. Walkley says:

We believe this is the first month since the iPhone 4S launched in October 2011 that it was not the top-selling smartphone in the U.S. market.

Samsung's Galaxy S III is looking to get some 4G LTE action in Australia, with Australian telcos Telstra and Optus networks inking a deal which will see them sell the quad-core version of the S III with 4G LTE capabilities in Australia.

Another big, big bonus is that the new phone will sport the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as its OS. The US has the 4G version of the S III, but its powered by Qualcomm's dual-core S4 processor and ships with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, so Australian's will have a very nice bonus in their hands.

Optus' customers will get their hands on the 4G-capable Galaxy S III first, where it will launch in the middle of this month. Telstra customers will have to wait until mid-to-late October to get their hands on one. Optus' variant supports LTE FDD 800, 1800 and 2600MHz spectrum's providing a theoretical maximum download speed of 100Mbps, it can also default to a 3G network at HSPA+ speeds of up to 42Mbps.

One of the things that the Nexus 7 didn't have going for it, was that it didn't sport Internet capabilities when not near a wireless network. But, for $199, can you really complain that the Nexus 7 lacked 3G? No.

Rumor now has it that ASUS are set to launch a 3G-capable Nexus 7 tablet, and it could launch just 6 weeks from now. Adding 3G to the tablet might bump the price up, but by how much? $30? $50?

How much would you be willing to pay for a 3G-enabled Nexus 7? If it were 4G-enabled, I might have picked one up and thrown a pre-paid 4G SIM inside, now that would be sweet.

A complete list of specifications for Samsung's upcoming well-named Galaxy Victory have leaked out. The new phone looks to be a mid-range device, but doesn't lack too many of the higher-end features or specs.

Samsung's Galaxy Victory sports a 4-inch 800x480-pixel screen, dual-core 1.2GHz CPU from Qualcomm, 4G LTE support, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, 1.3-megapixel front facer, and Google's Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, with Samsung's TouchWiz UI thrown on top.

A full list of specs:

We've been hearing rumors of the iPad mini, which is destined to be a 7.85-inch iPad, down from it's bigger brother which sports a 10.1-inch screen. News comes from Instapaper developer, Marco Arment, who has discovered two new iPad device codes in his logs, which he believes point to the fact of an iPad mini.

The new identifiers arrive as "iPad2,5" and "iPad2,6". Arment notes that the iPad2,1 through to the iPad2,3 identifiers are known to link up to the iPad 2's WiFi, GSM and CDMA variants. The iPad2,4 was the die-shrunk, slightly cheaper version of the iPad 2 that was released with the third-generation 'new iPad'. The Retina-powered iPad has the designation of iPad3,x.

iPad2,5 and iPad2,6 have not been seen before, and line up with rumors of the iPad mini being released shortly:

We've seen a bunch of Windows 8-based devices announced and shown off this week thanks to the IFA event being held in Berlin right now, and Dell have just joined the ranks with a very cool looking, but different Windows 8-based convertible notebook.

The new product from Dell brings back the Duo brand, which should excite some people. It sports a netbook design that allows the display to flip vertically 180 degrees inside the frame of the display itself. I'm not sure how many times you'd be able to do this without it breaking (or at least feeling like it's going to break) but it is a seriously cool looking convertible notebook. Dell is making this outing of the Duo brand a premium device, sporting a machined aluminum carbon fiber design, as well as featuring Corning's Gorilla Glass. Welcome to the Dell XPS Duo 12.

Let's talk specs, Dell's XPS Duo 12 sports a 12-inch, 1920x1080 10-point multitouch display with edge-to-edge glass, Intel's Ivy Bridge-based Core i5 or i7 processors, 256GB of SSD storage, USB 3.0 ports, and a miniDisplayPort connector. All of this weighs in at less than three pounds, and finally, we have the OS, Microsoft's Windows 8.

It seems as though no company can keep a secret anymore. Samsung has just suffered a leak, albeit only a few hours prior the official announcement. But, be that as it may, we are going to share with you the official specifications of the Samsung Galaxy Note II, thanks to PocketNow who obtained the press release.

As rumored, and previously thought, the new Samsung Galaxy Note II will feature a 5.5-inch 1280x720 screen, which means it will have a true 16:9 aspect ratio. The screen will be similar to the original, both in resolution and in type--the new one is the same HD Super AMOLED panel. Along with the bigger screen, the Galaxy Note II will receive a 1.6GHz quad-core CPU (type unknown at this time).

It will also feature 2GB of RAM, an 8 MP camera on the rear, and a 1.9 MP camera on the front. Better yet, the new Note II will feature a battery that has more capacity than the original--3,100mAh vs 2,500mAh--while the device will be slimmer. However, the device ends up weighing 2 grams more than the original, big deal.