CDMA-packing Nokia Lumia 800C for China Telecom goes official

Nokia's boss and China Telecom's boss got together to announce the first CDMA Windows Phone for China - it's a version of the Nokia Lumia 800, named Lumia 800C, and it will be China Telecom's first Lumia phone.

The Lumia 800C packs all the cool features that the regular 800 has (except it swaps GSM for CDMA). That includes Nokia Maps, Drive and Music. Maps and Drive have free maps for China and other countries as usual, but tap into local content providers for better location-based services.

The 800C will come with magazine apps from Trends preinstalled (Cosmopolitan, FHM, Harper's Bazaar and Esquire) and the first 100,000 people to get the phone will be able to download Fruit Ninja and Plants vs. Zombies for free.

The Nokia Lumia 800C will be available in April through Tianyi FlyYoung shops, Nokia stores and many other retailers (both brick and mortar and online). Off contract, the Lumia 800C will go for 3600 Chinese yuan ($570).

A more affordable Nokia Lumia 610C is also in the works and it is expected to hit shelves in Q2.

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Samsung I9300 leaked info suggests a mid-may launch

Alright folks, bring out your salt shakers for we have yet another Galaxy S III rumor for you. According to a tip received from one of our readers, the Samsung I9300 will be hitting stores in mid-May this year.

Now as most people would assume, the I9300 model name suggests that the phone could be the long overdue Galaxy S III. But turns out that the phone was actually called the Galaxy M in the ordering system. Now this could either be just to throw people off or it might actually just be a new handset called the Galaxy M.

Now if you recall Samsung's recently changed naming scheme, the Galaxy M moniker is for mid-tier handsets. If it is a mid-range device, then the image leak from a few days ago makes sense. That device never looked like a flagship Samsung device to us and more like a mid-range smartphone, befitting of the Galaxy M name.

If the information is correct, we are still a month and a half away from the phone hitting shelves, but that also means that the official announcement will be a lot sooner.

Thanks EgonOne for the tip!

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Samsung Galaxy Note shipments exceed 5 million

The failure of the Dell Streak may have told us otherwise but it seems there is a demand for gigantic smartphones/tiny tablets after all and that people have no problem stretching their hands and pockets as long as the device in question is good (which the Streak clearly wasn't).

This is being proved by the strong demand for the Samsung Galaxy Note of which 5 million handsets have been shipped till now. It's still not as good as some of the other popular handsets out there, including Samsung's own Galaxy S II but considering the phone's rather odd dimensions we think the phone is doing rather well.

The phone will be going on sale in Japan shortly, which is sure to further bolster its sales. The phone will be offered on NTT DoCoMo's LTE network and will be sold under the name 'Docomo Next Series Galaxy Note SC-05D' (because Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch wasn't a ridiculous enough name).

Anyway, if you think humans are the only ones who seem to have taken a liking for the Galaxy Note, here is a video of an elephant clearly in love with the phoneblet.

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Galaxy S II for O2 UK getting ICS as we speak

The largest carrier in the UK - O2 - is rolling out an Ice Cream Sandwich update to its Galaxy S II owners as we speak.

The update is available through the Kies software so if you're among the lucky ones be sure to plug in your phone in and search for it.

Three UK customers received ICS almost a week ago on their Galaxy S II's too.

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Verizon announces the LG Lucid 4G, starts shipping March 29

Inevitably after it's leak a few days ago, Verizon officially announced the LG Lucid 4G. Under the hood, this mid-ranger is featuring a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, handling Android 2.3 without any hesitation. Additionally, Verizon promises Ice Cream Sandwich update in the near future.

The LG Lucid 4G is built around a 4-inch NOVA IPS-LCD display rocking a 480x800 resolution and Gorilla glass for extra protection. LG has given it 8GB of built-in storage with an microSD card slot, unfortunately, missing. At the back, there's a 5MP 1080p HD video recording camera.

Naturally, the device comes with LTE connectivity and is able to share its fast connection with up to 10 devices. Wi-Fi n, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 3.0 and USB 2.0 are on board as well. Measurements aren't bad either at 119.1 x 62.2 x 11.4 mm and weight of 142 grams with a 1700mAh battery under the back cover.

The Lucid 4G will launch on March 29 with a price tag of $80 after a $50 mail-in rebate and a two-year contract. Verizon will give you your rebate in the form of a debit card after you show them a receipt, which seems kind of an inconvenience.

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AT&T reveals Lumia 900 and Titan II off-contract pricing

Following yesterday's announcement of the special prices for the HTC Titan II and Nokia Lumia 900 including a two-year contract, now AT&T has spilled the beans on the off-contract price of the devices in case you are not into two-year commitments.

The HTC Titan II will sell for $549,99, while the Nokia Lumia 900 will set you back $449,99. It's not all that bad, when you compare them to HTC's subsidized price of $199,99 and Lumia's $99,99 on contract price tag.

As we told you yesterday, expect the Titan II and Lumia 900 to hit AT&T on April 8.

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UK Samsung Galaxy Note and Tabs get £115 of free multimedia

If you live in Great Britain and plan on purchasing a Galaxy Note phoneblet or some of the Galaxy Tab tablets, you might want to hear about the latest offer by the Korean company. You are eligible to receive free multimedia worth up to £115 and a free antivirus application.

Here's how it goes - you purchase your Galaxy device from an O2, Phones4U, Carphone Warehouse, Dixons or Orange (Everything Everywhere) store and access the Samsung Hub app to redeem your "Galaxy Package".

You have to click on Exclusives and submit your IMEI number. Once the number has been verified you should click on the voucher button to download your voucher code for use at Samsung Movies and 7Digital.

The voucher entitles you to rental movies from Samsung Movies (available as a free download from the Samsung Hub) up to the value of £65 and tracks worth up to £50 from 7digital music store (available within the Samsung hub itself).

Finally, you can download the AVG pro security application from the Exclusives section of the Samsung Hub, by clicking the AVG icon. You have four days to get all the free stuff so don't waste any time.

You can find the complete terms and conditions of the offer by following this link. Happy downloading!

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Backup your data from HTCSense.com before it's deleted

HTC is informing users of HTCSense.com that the site will soon be undergoing renovation. However, shockingly, HTC will not be retaining user data and after April 30, 2012 all the user uploaded data will be deleted. To prevent loss of data, HTC has provided instructions on its site on how you can download it while there is still time.

For those who are not aware, HTCSense.com is a cloud-sync service specially for HTC devices, that backed up your contacts, messages, call history, etc. on its servers. It's similar to iCloud, except it's not as comprehensive.

It's a bit appalling that HTC is deleting user data just for renovation purposes; it would have been understandable if the service was shutting down for good. The whole point of syncing your data to the cloud is so that you don't have to worry about it ever getting accidentally deleted. The users should not have to worry about things like HTC renovating the service; these things should happen in the background without affecting user uploaded content. It seems HTC has not quite got the point of cloud storage, yet.

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Fu Chunli from China downloaded the 25 billionth App Store app

You may already know that a certain Ms. Fu Chunli from China was the person who ended up downloading the 25 billionth app from the App Store. As usual, Apple caller her up and offered to fly her to Beijing where she will be presented her prize, the $10,000 iTunes gift card, interact with the media and get some training for her iPhone.

Turns out, Ms. Chunli bought her new iPhone just a month before downloading the lucky 25 billionth app. She was unaware of this competition by Apple and was understandably confused when she got a call from Apple, concluding that it was just some hoax. It was later when she got the email from Apple that she finally believed that she had won the prize.

After that, Chunli was flown to Beijing by Apple, where she visited Apple's corporate headquarters and the Sanlitun retail store, where the award ceremony was arranged.

After all that, we are guessing that the iPhone won't be the last Apple product that Ms. Chunli would be purchasing. As far as the iTunes downloads are concerned, she seems to be sorted for life, what with $10,000 sitting in her account.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering which was the 25 billionth app, it was Disney's game Where's My Water?.

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HTC Titan II hits AT&T alongside the Lumia 900 on April 8

It seems the Nokia Lumia 900 won’t be the alone when it launches. AT&T will offer its customers another Windows Phone-running gadget – the HTC Titan II.

HTC Titan II hands-on photos

The Titan II is quite an impressive fella with its huge 4.7-inch WVGA screen, a 16MP camera sensor, LTE connectivity and an internal storage of 16GB.

The smartphone packs a 1.5GHz single-core processor and that’s probably the reason why there is no 1080p video capturing, but rather 720p mode only.

The Titan II is slated to hit the AT&T network on April 8 for $200 with a two-year contract.

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Dual-SIM HTC Wind T328w headed to China

A few leaks suggest HTC is ready to push a rather cheap dual-SIM droid to the Chinese market. Known as the T328w, it should also go by the Wind moniker.

 
HTC T328w

The phone is running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and HTC Sense UI 4.0, but is based on quite outdated hardware – a Qualcomm MSM7227A SoC with 1GHz single-core processor, Adreno 200 GPU and 512MB RAM.

  
HTC T328w

The rest of the specs include a 4-inch Super-LCD WVGA display, a 5MP snapper with LED flash, 4GB internal storage, Beats audio support and various connectivity options.

The HTC T328w is rumored to cost 2000 Chinese yuan (about €240), but there is no info on availability, yet.

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Nokia Belle FP2 appears in test results

Owners of newer Symbian phones got some good news recently when Nokia announced that they'll be getting a Feature Pack 1 update for their smartphones. They might be in for some more good news - results on the HTML5 Test list results for "Nokia Belle FP 2 (S60 5.5)".

The FP1 update is featured on the Nokia 808 PureView, but will make its way to the 603, 700 and 701, with the last two getting a CPU speed bump. It's not clear what we might expect from FP2 (it's not official), but Nokia seems to have done a lot of work on the browser.

The Belle FP1 update gives a big boost to the browser in terms of compatibility - it jumps from 157 (+ 7 bonus points) for vanilla Belle to 212 (+ 9 bonus points) for FP1 and higher still with FP2 - 242 (+ 9 bonus points).

For comparison, Android 2.3 scores 181+1, Android 4.0 does 256+3, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango scores very low at 141+5, while Mobile Safari on iOS 5 is king of the stock browsers with a score of 305+9.

The device running Belle FP2 is listed as Nokia 701, so there's a good chance that the devices that are getting FP1 will get FP2 as well.

Anyway, a post on Nokia Beta Labs caught our attention too - it marks the end of the beta period for Universal Search. It's a handy feature that looks through contacts, emails, maps and so on (similar but better than the old Search app found in older Symbians).

What's interesting about it is now that the beta is over, you'd expect to get the release version of the app - but it's nowhere to be found in the Nokia Store. It's quite a coincidence - the appearance of another Belle feature pack and the disappearance of Universal Search - so that's one feature that might be headed to FP2.

By the way, that HTML5 Test results page is very interesting and mentions a couple of big names - Windows Phone 8 and Tizen 1. That, of course, is flimsy proof of their existence, but still.

Thanks to Jason for the tip!

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Apple to offer royalty-free license to nano-SIM patent

A few days ago, we reported that Apple is locking horns with other companies, primarily Nokia, regarding the design of the nano-SIM, the next generation of the SIM design that will be dramatically smaller than even the current micro-SIM. Both companies have put forth their version of what nano-SIM design should be, with each claiming theirs to be better.

Image courtesy Esato

Apple's design so far was the most popular among the European carriers, and there is a good chance that it is the one that gets chosen eventually. This led to some fears that Apple will eventually control the license and others will have to pay royalty to use it.

Now, however, thanks to a recent discovery by Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, it has come to light that Apple will offer the license to its nano-SIM patent royalty free. This means that tomorrow if the design gets chosen, then other companies won't have to pay Apple anything to use their patents regarding the nano-SIM design on their devices.

This proves that at least Apple is in this just to establish a new SIM standard that is smaller (and therefore better) rather than trying to make money off it.

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HTC One X for AT&T gets benchmarked, looks impressive

When the AT&T flavored HTC One X flagship got announced during MWC, quite a few people were left wondering whether its Snapdragon S4 chipset with two CPU cores will match the performance of the quad-core Tegra 3 of the international version.

Well, it looks like there is no need to worry over the performance of the U.S. bound handset. A couple of leaked benchmarks from the device, leaked by an alleged AT&T device tester, point at a seriously capable piece of hardware coming our way.

As you can see above, the two Krait cores, featured in the chipset have a serious knack for benchmarks. The tester has also mentioned that the battery life of the device is rather impressive as well.

The rumored time frame for the launch of the AT&T branded HTC One X is mid-May. Naturally, we will keep you posted as soon as we find out more.

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Developer stats show quick adoption of iOS 5.1 by users

iOS users have historically been shown to quickly upgrade to the latest update compared to other platforms and with the latest release of iOS 5.1 this seems truer than ever.

Developer David Smith who created the app Audiobooks, a universal app available on both the iPhone and the iPad in free and paid variants and with around 100,000 weekly downloads, has some statistics that he collected from the users downloading his app every since Apple released iOS 5.1 on March 7.

As you can see from the graph above, fourteen days after iOS 5.1 was released, 61 percent of the total users downloading his app were using it, with only 18 percent on the older iOS 5.0.0. The 19 percent of the users on iOS 4.x are likely those using older versions of the iPhone or iPod touch, who are not eligible for iOS 5.

If we look at only iOS 5.x users, the number is even more impressive, with 77 percent of the users on the latest update.

One of the suspected reasons for the quicker adoption of the latest iOS updates is the addition of over-the-air (OTA) updates that was introduced with iOS 5. Now since the update is available directly on their devices, users are more likely to instantly update their phones as soon as it is made available, instead of doing it some time later by connecting it to their computers.

Of course, this is good news for the developers, because if the users update to the newer OS versions quickly, they can also implement new OS related features in their apps faster and drop support for older OS versions that don't support these features.

This data is just for one app, however. We will have to wait for someone to take into account all iOS users so we can have a better idea of the adoption rate.

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RIM to give out BlackBerry OS 10 dev prototypes in early May

RIM is preparing a new OS - called BlackBerry 10 - to replace the two current OSes that it uses (BB OS 7 on phones and Tablet OS on the PlayBook). The BB OS 10 will launch late this year, but app developers can look forward to playing with it sooner - 2000 developer prototypes running a version of the OS will be given to the attendees of the BlackBerry Jam conference taking place in early May.

RIM’s VP of developer relations, Alec Saunders, says that the prototypes will have a very different user experience compared to the finalized BlackBerry 10 OS as they are intended to be just tools to help developers port their apps to the new platform.

The BlackBerry PlayBook‘s OS is reportedly similar to what BB 10 will be and that will make porting PlayBook apps to the new OS easy. Saunders says his goal is that “every single PlayBook app works on BB10”.

That‘s good, but what’s with RIM’s reluctance to show what the finalized OS will look like? Saunders says this is intentional as they want to take time and build up interest before launching the OS.

We have seen some alleged screenshots of the upcoming OS, but who knows how much will change until the time comes for RIM to unleash the first BlackBerry 10-powered devices.

New phones that run on BlackBerry OS 10 won’t be here for a while (at least until Q3 according toleaked roadmap), the oft leaked BlackBerry London might be the first. The PlayBook will see an update to BB OS 10 too, but it’s not clear if that will happen before or after the BB 10 phones launch.

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Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G lit its way through our studio

In case you were wondering like me, the answer is no – Samsung are not done churning out versions of the two-year old Galaxy S. The latest one is a U.S. bound, T-Mobile exclusive version, which goes by the rather long name Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G.

The newcomer to the Galaxy S lineup is the second member to enter the dual-core realm, following the footsteps of the Samsung Galaxy S Advance I9070. The Galaxy S Blaze 4G features a Snapdragon S3 chipset with two Scorpion cores, clocked at 1.5GHz – not too shabby for a mid-range device. The Qualcomm made chipset also allows the handset to take advantage of T-Mobile’s speedy 42 Mbps HSDPA network. NFC is also added to the connectivity suite of the device. The rest of the specs are taken straight from the I9000, save for the built in memory. In the case of the Galaxy S Blaze 4G, it is around 3GB.

The 4″ screen of the smartphone is the main reason for its pocket friendly measures of 121.7 x 62.9 x 11.2 mm. The weight of the device is an acceptable 127 grams.

Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G live photos

Software wise, the Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G runs the painfully familiar Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread, dressed in TouchWiz 4 launcher. Check it out in action below.

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The new iPad hits 25 additional countries today

As promised Apple unleashed the new iPad today into 25 more countries around the world. The first wave began on March 16 with Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Switzerland, UK, United States and the US Virgin Island.

Today the iPad officially makes a debut in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macau, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

Even more countries are expected to join this list in the next couple of months. Meanwhile our review is already live – you can check how cool is the new Retina display and the 5MP camera, as well as how hot could the iPad becomes because of the new quad-core GPU.

In case you are going to buy the 4G version of the new iPad, we strongly suggest you educate yourself about the supported carriers, bands and hotspots. It’s a bit tricky there.

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Samsung puts music to your Pocket in Africa

Samsung is planning to unveil a new music service exclusive to Africa called Samsung Pocket Music.

Appropriately enough, the new music service will be unveiled on the Samsung Galaxy Pocket, a device that Samsung claims is specifically designed with the African market in mind.

Now word yet on when this feature will go live, although it will first be tested in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya before going rolling out to the rest of the continent.

This is undoubtedly part of Samsung’s ambitious goal of growing its presence in Africa to a hefty $10 billion by 2015 across its entire range of consumer services, not just its mobile division.

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Tegra 3 packing Acer Iconia Tab A510 goes on pre-order in North America

The Acer Iconia Tab A510 that we saw at CES this year just went on pre-order in North America. The A510 is a 10.1″ tablet running Android 4.0 ICS on a Tegra 3 chipset. Acer has decided to go ahead and sell the Olympic Edition of the tablet.

They also unveiled the remaining features and specs to fill in the blanks (Acer announced only preliminary specs at CES). They include a list of productivity apps that come preinstalled with the tablet and other cool stuff.

Here are a bit more details on the Iconia Tab A510. Its screen measures 10.1″ and has 1280×800 pixels resolution and 85-degree viewing angle. The audio system is backed by Dolby Mobile 3.

The main camera is a 5MP unit with HD video recording and it’s accompanied by a 1MP front-facing cameras for video conferencing.

The Ice Cream Sandwich UI has been enhanced with the Acer Ring interface, which is a radial menu for quick access to the most used apps and websites.

The Iconia Tab A510 features Polaris Office 3.5 pre-installed for handling Office documents and will print wirelessly with Acer Print (compatible with 87% of brand-name printer according to Acer).

The A510 will last a whopping 12 hours of video playback thanks to its equally impressive 9800mAh battery and the power-efficient Tegra 3 chipset. The tablet has a microHDMI port for connection with HDTVs but can also use an HDMI to VGA converter to hook up to projectors.

There’s plenty of room for movies and other files too – the Iconia Tab A510 comes with 32GB of built-in memory and a microSD card slot should you run out of space.

The Acer Iconia Tab A510 measures 259.1 x 175.3 x 10.2 mm and weighs 680g. The tablet’s body has a soft touch finish and the back features the logos of Acer and the Olympic games.

The A510 is available for pre-sale in the US and Canada for $450, silver and black colors are available. You can also grab a snazzy protective case for an extra $40.

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